Back in the late 90s, when Kerrang! covered The Prodigy’s The Fat Of The Land, there was a furore. It scarcely seems possible now, but there really was.
I bought the album. I enjoyed the blurring of the edges. I’ve never been keen on hearing the same thing again and again.
As ever, though, some of the best music of its type was less heralded. Radiator released an astonishing record the year after Liam, Maxim and Keith conquered the planet. Then, in 2000, Grand Theft Audio stuck out Blame Everyone. That line-up included former Wildhearts drummer Ritch Battersby, Three Colours Red’s Chris McCormack and Real TV’s Jay Butler.
Butler is back here as one half of Concrete Hyena, alongside Jim Davies, the man who once supplied guitar riffs for The Prodigy. Live, they add Toshi, formerly of Ginger Wildheart’s Hey! Hello!, who I once saw fill in at a Wildhearts gig in Dudley on one particularly fateful night.
Should all that sound like a 90s reunion and a signal for everyone to get sorted for E’s and whizz, then, honestly, it pretty much is.
Anyone who likes any—or all—of the bands mentioned above needs to get onto Future Primitives tout de suite.
“Patchwork Guilt” is so thoroughly 1999 that I might as well be pretending I’m not in love with a girl called Sara, as I did for most of that year. Concrete Hyena have their own way of delivering these songs, though, and they know it: “The same species of animal, but we got new shoes.”
That line brilliantly sums them up.
I’ve never been inside an underground club at three in the morning, but I imagine it sounds like “Hi! I’m Radio Mike.” It is insanely catchy, while “Let’s get out of bed, betray your dreams with every step” casually nails the human condition amid the beats and grinding guitars.
The mixture of dance music and melody is perfect on “Last Song We’ll Ever Sing,” with its slower feel proving just as effective. “Cut Me Mick” is harsher and more industrial, and you can already imagine it starting a moshpit.
“Guns And Ammo” offers more of the same—which is to say that it is clever and brilliant. The choruses do not merely lodge themselves in your head; they weld themselves into place.
The music swaggers on “Dark Times On Floor 94.” Concrete Hyena like repeating a phrase until it becomes both a hook and a threat, and “I’m not playing wit’ you” sounds like the warning of a band that means business.
“Oddball” closes matters as a slow burner, steadily building before exploding into a crescendo of rapid-fire lines.
Future Primitives might evoke a particular period, but it never feels like empty nostalgia. Concrete Hyena have taken the sounds that once blurred the boundaries between rock clubs, raves and festival fields and found fresh purpose in them.
The species survives. It just bought itself some trendy modern trainers.
RATING 8/10
