The London Debut of the latest stage of evolution for Pop Will Eat Itself

Made of three quarters of Pop Will Eat Itself, and rebranded as "Vileevils", tonights gig isn't so much a fresh start as an old beginning. Two years to the day after the final PWEI show, this new band/lineup debut in the capital with a short set that offers no major surprises and a determined clutch of new material.

Their short set, just 60 minutes and 14 songs long, is, to all intents and purposes, Pop Will Eat Itself's sixth album : gamely continuing despite the enforced absence of maxed-out film composer Clint Mansell, the band wrote and recorded new material awaiting the day Clint would be able to contribute. The day didn’t come, and thus the Vileevils were born :  in effect PWEI minus their bassist and sometime vocalist, with a clutch of new songs and some old ones.

From a riproaring, pissed off "Everyday Is A World War", to the final, and rambunctious, ramshackle encore of the PWEI/Prodigy face-off "Their Law", the set is a brave new world for the band, the next (necessary) step in musical evolution. Moving away from the smooth electronic stylings of their previous work to a heavier, rawer, shoutier, more punk-rock approach, The Vileevils are an abrasive bleeding edge.

Thank God not everyone mellows with middle age. No spring chickens, these boys. Aside from expanding waistlines and shrinking hairlines, the music has teeth. Abrasive. Graham Crabb stalks the stage like a semi-caged animal, leaping around, rapping semi-coherent, stream-of-consciousness soundbites whilst around the rest of the band rip up a storm. Fuzz bashes his sticks like a man who was born into a groove. Adam Mole, leaps around. To my right Luke flips through the sheets with the guitar chords on, trying not to lose his place in the new stuff.

Naturally, the four Pop Will Eat Itself songs they do play ("Babylon", "There Is No Love Between Us Anymore", "NoFear" and the Prodigy-colloboration "Their Law") go down an absolute storm. It's not that the new stuff isn't worthy of loving, it's that, as with anything, it takes a while before you know them well enough to love. For now, at a first listen, the songs are riproaring serrated edges of crunchy guitars designed for jumping around to. Just like the old Pop Will Eat Itself songs then, but less flippant, more.. dare I say.. mature and slightly darker than their final era. It's welded to a relentless, mechanised rhythm and topped off with . In some ways this configuration : the meshing of man and machine and sequencers and guitars sound dreadfully like some kind of sub Apollo 440, dated dance-music-for-people-who-don't-go-dancing, but it's much much more than that.

If you liked Pop Will Eat Itself, you'll like this : the next generation, the new dawn of PWEI-in-all-but-name, carrying forth the spirit of the band and the sound of their past but utterly of the present,  right here, right now.

links: Vileevils performing at Camden Underworld on YouTube, filmed by "Snags59" :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkoyiFwckQc : "Everyday Is A World War" (live)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twnO8PrgIp0 : "Demon" (live)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNLKL22VBTE : "Their Law" (live)

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