David Sue

Primal Scream marked the beginning of their Xtrmntr campaign with the gambit 'we're making a soundtrack for living in modern Britain'. Two years on, dogged by last year's 'Bomb The Pentagon' controversy, and with their twin totems of politics and dance music both distorted by fashion and context, the Scream's politics have never looked muddier.

Thankfully, never once do we hear any sense of compromise come across in the music. In fact, if anything, they seem as much informed by the shifting dynamics of the rock hierarchy as marginalised by it. Musically, Evil Heat is the story of the Scream at their most propulsive and layered, taking the brutal disco-punk collages of Vanishing Point and Xtrmntr and igniting them with an innovative spittle which positively screams "Electroclash!"

For the most part, this comes in spades; from clattering, scattershot missives like recent single 'Miss Lucifer' to the mad-eyed garage punk howl of 'City' and the most audacious thing in the Scream canon to date 'Rise', an inspired meeting of PIL, Sonic Youth and anti-corporate bile. That they can partner such armed musical chaos with something as crystalline and slight as 'Some Velvet Morning', the already contentious duet with Kate Moss - who is actually damn good on here - is testament to the layered and colossal musical fabric of this record.

Less of a soundtrack for modern day Britain and more a musical will-and-testament of Britain's most urgent and deeply angry rock band - still crazy after all these years. Perhaps the Scream's politics were more straightforward that we thought.

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