November 21, 1998

London Highbury Garage

Ruthless blowtorch techno plus shouting, shouting and even more shouting...

How thoughtful. Clearly concerned that the great British public might be feeling a tad mellow for screaming 200mph hardcore on a sub-zero Sunday evening, London Underground has closed the Victoria line, the main route to the Garage. Great news, then, for the latest recruits from Berlin's Digital Hardcore corps to hit these shores. Any danger of Christmas cheer or end-of-weekend apathy dampening the revolutionary fire is banished before the doors even open.

Bomb 20 greets the seething masses, appeasing their speedlust by racing through his debut LP 'Field Manual' in under half-an-hour. And while he may not jump frenziedly about the stage like every other DHR act, he still sounds like an industrial accident in a breakbeat factory. And that is good enough for us.

Over to SHIZUO, whose proclamation on his T-shirt, 'I Like Hate - And I Hate Everything Else', sets the tone for the uniformly violent mischief he calls music. By the time he's finished booting 'New Kick' about, even the venue's fire alarms are singing along. So he proceeds to abuse a guitar, pausing only to pick out a few rancid bars of 'Smoke On The Water'. The resultant mocking from the audience confirms the news; not only is rock dead, it now has a fresh turd nestling on its grave.

Believe it or not, that's just the warm-up. As headliners EC8OR appear, enthusiasm turns to adulation and the first ten rows become an undiluted moshpit. This is what HUGGY BEAR would have sounded like if they'd replaced themselves with robots. Ruthless blowtorch techno plus shouting, shouting and even more shouting.

The DHR revolution remains right on track. London Underground, take note.