If extraordinary barrages of crashing drums, hissing reverb and guttural howls tend to arrive with fair warning from even the most unsparing of bands, Edinburgh trio Young Fathers set clattering chaos and tribal intensity as their standard from the start.
Seeming to physically pit themselves against each other at times, these mesmerising Mercury Prize winners - Alloysious Massaquoi, Kayus Bankole and Graham Hastings possessing roots in Nigeria, Scotland and Liberia – brought a glowering, calculated abrasiveness to a crammed Haunt, bristling with an ineradicably fierce tension and anger.
Their lyrics, filtered through hip-hop, dance, punk and soul, felt like charged, punchy admonishments of society's ills – “money money cash for gold”, came the prophet-like refrain of Queen Is Dead, its singers shuddering and prowling the stage like entranced soothsayers.
Two of their labelmates, Kate Tempest and Roots Manuva, could be touchstones for the often-anxious commentary they fulminate, although their dexterity and swiftness of phrase allows Young Fathers to sound like unsurpassable storytellers in their own right.
Get Up combined the melody of a hit single with mentions of a party, a corpse, a bleak future, revolution and rival gangs and cowboys, all rasped out while these brooders stood momentarily statuesque.
Five stars
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