Hadouken! - For The Masses
Review by Jack Foley
HADOUKEN!‘S second album For The Masses is every bit as pumped up, aggressive and in your face as their debut, Music For An Accelerated Culture. It’s also just as bad.
Recorded in Groningen, Holland, with Dutch electronic producers Noisia, it’s billed as “a landmark modern dance-rock album” that’s destined to cement Hadouken!‘s reputation as Britain’s most forward-thinking band.
Says singer James Smith: “We know what our fans want. They want it hard and they want it fast. I want this record to sound good over a 1,000 kilowatt system or on a Nokia phone on the back of a bus.
“We don’t want to discriminate. We just want to make immediate contact.”
Pray, though, you don’t get unlucky enough to be sat next to someone who is blaring it out of a Nokia phone on a bus, or any other form of public transport for that matter. It’s not for the faint-hearted.
It’s also not at all appealing. I’m all for hard and fast dance-rock. But The Prodigy did it all so much better a few years ago, and For The Masses just seems to be hitching a ride on those coat-tails.
The best the album has to offer are tracks like Turn The Lights Out, which at least drops a semi-decent chorus, House Is Falling, which reigns in the musical assault and comes over more pop-house, and Lost, which adds in some vocoder laced vocals and keeps things in check and is more Ibiza focused.
But none of those tracks are particularly long-lasting in the memory, while offerings such as M.A.D and Ugly test the patience, before Bombshock and Play The Night tire you out completely.
The best that can be said about those tracks, in particular, are that you might find them playing over the end credits of a bad horror movie. But then most of For The Masses plays out like a horror show… and I was glad when it was finally over.
Download picks: Turn The Lights Out, House Is Falling, Lost
Track listing: