On March 18, 2000, Primal Scream played one of the greatest free concerts this writer has ever seen, taking the stage of the London Astoria 2 club in central London on a Saturday afternoon for a performance arranged for live broadcast on Japanese TV. Promoting their sixth allbum XTRMNTR, released just six weeks earlier, as central London shoppers passed by in the spring sunshine, Bobby Gillespie's band set about evoking hell on earth, with a barrage of noise as exhilarating as it was borderline terrifying.
Tonight, Glasgow's finest are back in the capital for a one-off show to celebrate the 25th anniversary of that record, and while the passing of time is cruelly highlighted by the fact that three members of the band who made XTRMNTR - guitarist Robert 'Throb' Young, keyboardist Martin Duffy and recently deceased bassist Gary 'Mani' Mounfield - are no longer with us, hearing the album performed in full it's impossible not to consider that its themes are now more relevant than ever.
The most political album of the band's career, XTRMNTR railed against authoritarian governments, state-sanctioned violence, naked corruption, exploitation by multinational corporations, lying politicians and the military industrial complex. The world it described 25 years ago was a fucked-up and dark place, but the present-day photographs which flash behind the band as they reprise Swastika Eyes - harrowing images of genocide in Gaza, ICE on the streets of America, Elon Musk's infamous fascist salute - are a painful reminder that it's only got infinitely darker. It means that tonight's show is less about nostalgia than a reaffirmation of the importance of resistance, of protest, of refusing to be silenced when calling out injustice. And the Scream's electro-dub-punk-funk-Krautrock soundscapes still resonate with righteous fury.
