Primal Scream
XTRMNTR

THE REVIEW

Almost 15 years ago, Screamadelica was released, anticipating the current times, where the line between rock and dance-electronica is increasingly blurred and thin. In 1992, there were people who frowned upon listening to Don't Fight It Feel It because, according to not-so-open minds, it distorted the essence of rock. Since '92, a lot of water has passed under the bridge, and rock has no more limitations. Those who listen to it are open to contamination.

The Primal Scream still continue to go beyond, just like they did 15 years ago. Faced with 2000's Exterminator, we find ourselves speechless, an additional transition towards the future but still with a passion for rock in their blood: Accelerator unleashes the dirtiest Stooges-like guitars, the first single Swastika Eyes is better than the Chemical Brothers, who also provide a breathtaking remix on the second side of the record. Pills is almost rapped, Blood Money initially seems like an epileptic soundtrack for 007 but then grows with an impressive progression of bass, drums, and trumpets reminiscent of some 70s Miles Davis fusion, a tumult that spills into Keep Your Dreams, worthy of Higher Than The Sun. But what remains engraved is the terrifying progression of the first four tracks opening the album: Kill All Hippies is a sort of accusation against former '68ers (but also '77ers) who, once in power, forgot about their ideals: because the society highlighted by this very hard work is the society of (James) Dean, a society that has reached the extreme and doesn't know how to bring novelty except through death. The excitement is subversive through the different, through traffic that isn't there and increases, because they represent the society that accumulates until normality becomes the only thing, a congestion of people lining up for suicide, which is the masterpiece of their life, where the apocalypse is the desired and sought-after diversion and orgasm as the only thing that matters, the society of Dean who plays with his cars, with speed, with his fatally wounded.

A record launched like a bomb, to strike the superstructures that human reason builds to justify the extreme act of its own degradation, this is what they talk about, but also about the disgust and indignation toward their country's internal politics, which captures the reality of British youth, trapped between drugs, alcohol, and repression (it is the period when Glasgow's public administration imposes a curfew).

Their protest work is mainly in the sound, explosive and pounding from tracks like the title track, close to industrial music, with supersonic and provocative techno driven at exhausting rave parties post-Trainspotting pace from the Edinburgh Screamadelica, like the extraordinary Swastika Eyes (a frontal assault against the order imposed by the police and the state and against U.S. national-capitalist imperialism). To these, which are the pillars of the album, are added rock 'n' roll pieces disfigured by terrifying distortions like Accelerator or dragging pieces like Shoot Speed Kill Light.

In conclusion, a true riot-record, as the MC5 would have sounded today.