Hadouken!

Yo soundboy wanna get merky? Roast that indie boy like turkey? Yea? Exactly? Mean nothing to you? From the outside, the sub-ubiquitous genre known as ‘grime’ might seem confusing enough – all dirty beats and non-rhymes that rhyme that contradict themselves all the time, like this line, then end with a threat, yea, so sublime, it’ll go on and on and on and on until you’re out of your mind. Etc. etc. etc. ETC! (sorry, can’t believe I just did that)

So, grime? Totally 2004, right? The preserve of confused youngsters tuned into Channel U, seduced by a bloke waving a massive ROAST CHICKEN at the camera going “YO! WHAT DA F*CK!” (Seriously, Bear Man, go watch it). Dizzee Rascal has been and gone, liberal Guardian readers would rather read about this quaint thing called ‘New Rave’ now and that awful ‘Jade Goody’ (what the f*ck is that about, by the way?)

WRONG! Grime’s not dead and New Rave’s going to last longer than anyone thought. Hadouken! are proof, as they flush the two into a tempest of rapid rock rhapsody. After kicking it on NME’s breaking bands comp (didn’t win, mind, that award went to My Device – anyone heard of them since?), Hadouken! have smacked up a right little storm with their indie-cum-new-rave-cum-garage-cum-metal brapness, and that’s not even considering their masterful ploughing of pop culture with a band name that references Street Fighter II at a time where original Street Fighter II players are at their teenage/twenty-something RAVE ALERT peak. Bo!

Like warped synth monsters, jerking off highlighter pens that spunk neon aggro, Hadouken! are a special brand of colourful filth. Nottingham loves it. The small Stealth’s stage is a perfect pedestal for their localised rave burp, and everyone’s sucking it up like a bunch of kinky stink perverts.

‘That Boy That Girl’, their riotous debut, is like Lethal Bizzle fighting a Korg Electribe that’s sh*tting nails and fruit (what?)... and they need such ridiculous hyperbole because they’re a lot like watching a Japanese anime movie, in Japanese, played backwards.

Then all of a sudden you think you’re watching Test Icicles, which is obviously brilliant because everyone misses Test Icicles. Ah woo waa wee waa.

Everyone’s drunk and crushed up and it smells vaguely of queef, but that’s fine because this is a sound clash you want to get dirty for. Even the stiffest brute leaves a little bit more eccentric, a little more idiosyncratic, a little more colourful, flamboyant and down right rude.

Bloody hell, I was a civil human being before the gig. Look at me now. As this review testifies... Hadouken! turned me into Nathan Barley.

Good, Bad? You decide.

(We're worried for this reviewer's health - ed)

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.