Primal Scream - XTMNRTR live: The album of the 00s still hits hard

XTRMNTR by Primal Scream is the last great punk record. Not punk in style, although it is certainly an album to strip the flesh from your bones, but in the way it felt dangerous.

It came out in 2000, and was the last release for Creation Records; as that label fell apart, XTRMNTR was under-supported Bobby Gillespie later said, and although it hit No.3 in the album charts when people still cared about them, it was not the smash hit it could have been. And yet with its aggressive aesthetics - they were renamed PRML SCRM, Gillespie had a buzz cut and they turned up to Glastonbury on a helicopter - and intensely visceral songs it had a cultural impact, an instant cult record par excellence, one that felt like a throwback to a time when music was a threat to the nation. As with records by Sex Pistols or Velvet Underground, it felt subversive and cool just to own it.

Two generations after punk, (Bobby Gillespie being a Glasgow tenement kid punk) and one generation after acid house (for which Primal Scream with their landmark record Screamadelica were crucial) it was apparent they had finally managed to meld the two. XTRMNTR combined aggression with euphoria and the result was revolutionary. Genuinely, let’s bring down the government revolutionary, destroy the ‘military-industrial illusion of democracy,’ and party as we do it.

The Scream at that time were unbeatable. With Mani in the band, and My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields often joining them on stage, they were easily one of the most powerful acts in rock history: The Rolling Stones on Ecstasy (and the rest). Yet in it’s wake did not come a revolution, not even a musical revolution. What came next was The Strokes, a kind of posh Monkees who reset rock back to trad rinky dink mediocrity and spawned years of lifestyle rock n roll, performative rebellion of which The Libertines were the ultimate examples, solipsistic nostalgia peddlers who were like cover models for a junkie Men’s Health.

Primal Scream

Filip Skiba

Anyway, it is welcome indeed that the Scream are touring XTRMNTR again, and the appreciation for its intent and sheer force has been met with a certain recognition that this record is ready to chime with a new generation who perhaps just need one prod into active rebellion. Bobby Gillespie is back in leather trousers, and although he hasn’t brought the buzz cut back, he still looks like the last great wraith in rock, sinuous and simmering - his between song banter is all lols, but few can give the audience the black, shark-eyed hostile stare like him. Visually it looks incredible, the video screens not holding back on the Palestine and Trump era as it adapts Julian House’s cut-up album artwork.

The begin with: the album, in order. Kill All Hippies, Accelerator, Exterminator and Swastika Eyes is a hell of way to start an album, songs of ‘civil disobedience’ and ‘empty heads and cancelled eyes’ where ‘my soul ain’t satisfied’, carrying promises of hitting the accelerator ‘into the future’. While the band don’t quite possess the guitar onslaught of old, when the blitzkrieg could rattle your teeth, and any band would miss Mani and his uniquely pulverising groove bass, the songs still sound fresh and vital. Pills, with Gillespie rapping about drug annihilation, ending with the lyrics, ‘such aa scenic syphilitic, psycho-parasitic, sub-mosquito, sick libido, fucked up, you're a sick fuck,’ well it weirdly puts a big smile on faces here.

The show dips a little as XTRMNTR’s instrumentals begin and Gillespie leaves the stage. Much as Andrew Innes is a legend, without Mani’s star quality these sections don’t quite convince. Handily, Swastika Eyes features twice on the album, coming back late on in the form of a Chemical Brothers remix, which means they have another bite at their most propulsive song. The mix wasn’t quite there the first time, but it is dizzyingly dark disco the second time around, carrying anti-genocide urgency. And then we have Shoot Speed/Kill Light, one of the all-time great album closers, with its Velvet Underground from Mars swagger and guitar work which was recorded by Bernard Sumner (Joy Division/New Order) on the original and which Innes delivers here in a manner which still raises the hairs on the back of your neck.

It has been a spirited if imperfect performance of the album, but that is not it of course. The band then embark on the hits, which duly brings the euphoria to the Outernet bunker. Loaded, Jailbird, Rocks, Country Girl, Movin On Up... despite being intent on blowing apart society with Screamadelica and bringing down Western civilisation with XTRMNTR, they also couldn’t seem to stop themselves from writing some of rock n rolls greatest songs as well. What a mad band. Oasis are great, but the Scream? Wow.