I'll admit it, I'd never heard of Hadouken! until I jumped to some compliation video on Youtube that featured "M.A.D." I have no idea what the video was about because all I kept thinking was, "What was that I just heard?!" A Google and Wikipedia search later and I was hooked on this so-called "grime" production crew out of Britain.
The M.A.D. EP has three distinguished tracks, along with three remixes of the title track. "M.A.D." itself is a real bass-pounder, an angry thrashing Hulk of a song leaving confusion and muddled thoughts in its wake:
Pop goes the pot it's pandemonium
Poison the sushi with plutonium
We eat enriched uranium
We drop beats that'll crack your cranium
After listening to this song a few times, I lost my Mensa membership. A bit more and a bit louder, I lost the power of speech. Good thing my friend came in the room and pulled me out before I started loping around on all fours and throwing feces at the wall.
There's a quality aggressively animalistic that's endemic to most Hadouken! works thanks to the overpowering drums and simple lyrics, but in M.A.D. it's concentrated so powerfully that it's amazing.
That momentum isn't kept up, though. "Something Really Bad" is, well, talking about itself. Thank God this track won't be on For the Masses. It's too simple, too rough, and the vocalization would make the cavemen cringe. It grows on you over time, but you have to give it a little effort in the beginning.
Fortunately, the dub mix of "Ugly" is a FANTASTIC follow-up. I'm not a huge dub fan - although DJZ's "Sub Slate" has helped me adjust well - but this song is dope. More varied and unique while not complex for Hadouken! regulars. It's also nice to see that a mainly-instrumental track of this quality can be produced by a band whose sound often is held together by the vocals.
The remixes of M.A.D. are pretty good, but none really strike me as nearly as potent as the original. The Detboi remix adds some dub flavor, Phace takes cues from drum 'n' bass, and Plastician... I don't know what Plastician did. I don't even know who Plastician is. All I know is he likes to sample clap tracks and... was drunk and bored?
This EP leaves me anxious for Hadouken!'s next release. Is it worth buying? Yes, I think so. Even if you were just paying for "M.A.D." and "Ugly (Dub Mix)", the price would be worth it. Just consider the accompanying tracks, while relatively irrelevant, as free bonus items that you can turn to when you're bored.
Of course, that's assuming you still have the mental capacity to operate a computer.
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