Kasabian’s ninth studio album, ACT III, releases this Friday, and Kasabian Archive has had an advance listen to the record.
Across the album, the band bounce between big rock songs, disco, hip-hop, electronics and some genuinely weird moments, while still making the whole thing feel like one complete piece of work. After a few listens, here’s my track-by-track take on ACT III.
quiet on set please 1m9
ACT III opens with quiet on set please 1m9, a short interlude built around a swelling, synthy keyboard sound. It starts from almost nothing and slowly builds into a much fuller synthesised sound, before a typewriter starts clacking away in the background. Eventually, we hear a robotic voice say “Quiet on set please.”
SOULMATE
The intro flows perfectly into the first full track, SOULMATE.The song starts with an electric guitar strumming repetitively, before the drums kick in around the ten-second mark. The first vocals we hear actually come from the chorus: “I hold it down for my love / She’s my real soulmate.” From there, Serge goes into a verse with an almost identical rap-adjacent vocal flow to CAT GOT YOUR TONGUE, his collaboration with Måneskin’s Thomas Raggi, although the delivery here is much more reserved. After the verse, we get a vinyl-scratch reload effect which throws us back into another chorus. This time, it’s initially carried by finger clicks and a very muted keyboard sound, before the heavy drums and the guitar riff from the start of the track kick back in. The next verse works in much the same way as the first and includes one of the lyrics printed on SOULMATE’s page inside the booklet: “One nation under one retail park.” Before we then we get Tim’s first guitar solo of the album, and it’s very cool. The tone is thick and futuristic, like if you could somehow turn futuristic honey into a guitar solo. After the solo, we’re back into the chorus again, before that opening guitar riff returns to close the song out.
Personally, I think SOULMATE is a brilliant opener for the album. I’d liken it much more to previous Kasabian album openers like ALCHEMIST and Let’s Roll Just Like We Used To than an outright banger like Club Foot or bumblebeee. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to immediately be the biggest song on the record, but instead setting the tone for what’s about to come. Even this early on, it lets you know that ACT III is very much an album as a complete body of work, rather than just a collection of tracks on the same disc.
Hippie Sunshine
Track three is Hippie Sunshine, which is already a certified Kasabian banger. If you’re reading this article, chances are you already know this one pretty well considering it released only a matter of days shy of a year ago. It’s a classic Kasabian festival anthem, carried by Dib’s bassline and the chant-along chorus: “Caught in a transit (L.S.D.) / I’ve got my brains in a basket (vitamin C).” This track just doesn’t miss. For me, it’s arguably one of Kasabian’s strongest songs of the last decade and already feels completely at home in the live set.
SUPERPOWERS
Next up, again, is a track most people reading this will already know very well; the divisive SUPERPOWERS. In my opinion, this song is massively over-hated, thanks to TikTok. I genuinely think that, in time, people will come around to realise they were just following a trend online. For anybody who hasn’t heard it, it’s a heavily hip-hop-inspired track and has a bit of an Eminem The Real Slim Shady vibe to it. It’s typical, swaggering, hip-hop inspired Kasabian and it knows exactly what it is. It’s also already proven itself to be a good addition to Kasabian’s festival setlist.
GREAT PRETENDER
Track five is the Radio X-bait single, GREAT PRETENDER. We’ve had this one for a few months now and, for me, it’s probably my least favourite of the four tracks released before the album. That’s not to say it’s a bad song, because it isn’t. It just doesn’t really do as much for me as the others. That said, we’re five tracks into the record at this point and I still don’t have anything that I’m not enjoying. And (spoiler alert), this trend will continue throughout the album.
NOTHING BETTER THAN THIS
NOTHING BETTER THAN THIS comes next and was the most recently released track ahead of ACT III. It’s an electronic-infused punk-rock song and, to me, sounds very much like the lovechild of Daft Punk and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The track has been segued live with Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy (often written on the setlist as “Lonely Boy”) which follows the Calvin Harris collaboration, Release The Pressure, and it works surprisingly well. There’s this filthy rock track underneath it all, but it’s wrapped in electronic production which gives it the Kasabian flavour. My only real issue with the song is that it’s not long enough. I feel like this song has a lot more to offer, yet we’re only just scratching the surface.
mind palace 2m7
Following NOTHING BETTER THAN THIS is the next interlude, mind palace 2m7, which is where side B of the album begins, and where shit starts getting weird. mind palace 2m7 is a dark ambient instrumental, with indistinct voices layered over the top. I’d liken it quite heavily to Serge’s After Dark, which he wrote for Nick Renegade’s Chiswick House exhibition. There’s also a little bit of the tail end of the original full-length version of 48:13’s (shiva) in there. It’s dark, strange and a bit unsettling. The sort of thing that wouldn’t be out of place soundtracking a stealth mission in a video game, or an episode of The Last of Us. Again, it flows directly into what comes next.
SILVER APPLE EYES
While mind palace 2m7 feels like walking down a dark alleyway, SILVER APPLE EYES kicks open the door at the end and suddenly we’re in the disco. The track opens with a lovely drumbeat and a disco groove, very much in the vein of Happenings tracks Coming Back To Me Good and Darkest Lullaby. Then Serge’s vocals come in and most of the instrumental drops away and we’re left mainly with acoustic guitar and a kick drum while Serge sings “Darling, darling, can’t you see this life was made for me?” The chorus gradually brings more of the instrumentation back in, with subdued electric guitar and keys coming into the mix as Serge sings “We can get down, you want it / Running around / Don’t get me started / We can stay lost in paradise.” Before we hit a brief synthesised drum breakdown. The placement of this immediately reminded me of the synthetic breakdown in the middle of Sixteen Blocks from For Crying Out Loud. Not sonically, but purely based on vibes. Once that’s done, we head back into another verse, where Serge takes us “from Leicester to London to Tokyo”, before another chorus. Then the track drifts into a middle-eight which leans heavily on the chorus, but suddenly takes everything into a much more dream-like place. Serge’s vocals feel like they’re floating along a lazy river while the track moves underneath him. Eventually, we come back down into one final chorus to close the song.I fully expect this one to be put into that You’re In Love With a Psycho/We Are Your Friends/Coming Back To Me Good section of the live set.
THE GURU AND THE CRYPTO TIME MACHINE
Next up is arguably the most batshit mental song in Kasabian’s entire back catalogue. THE GURU AND THE CRYPTO TIME MACHINE. The track opens with a little synthesiser that sounds like it’s been pulled straight out of a haunted carnival, then repetitive taal cymbals start clanging together and a looping bassline appears underneath them. Rolling toms come in as well, which feel like they’re circling your brain. The whole thing builds and builds before turning into what can only really be described as a straight-up fucking groove. Thankfully, I don’t have to describe this entire part of the track because Kasabian already posted some of it on Instagram earlier this year. The swelling Eastern-inspired instrumental section wouldn’t sound remotely out of place on a Gorillaz record. Eventually, that breaks down and we get a subdued guitar riff which feels like it comes from the same family as 48:13’s (mortis). The drums and taal from the intro return underneath Serge’s vocals, while the guitar starts swelling back into the track.
Lyrically, this song doesn’t actually do a huge amount. Each verse repeats roughly the same lines “So many things I’d like to teach you / But you never listen / I want to reach you but you look at me with indecision” but it’s the delivery that makes the song so interesting. The first verse has these floating vocals which glide along the guitars, whilst the second verse drops a lot of the weird percussion and gives us much more straightforward drums, with Serge suddenly delivering everything with a lot more venom… Then Serge basically completely loses his shit. “Turn it up / Pour the liquid in the cup / Plug me into the mains / I’m about to go insane.” These are properly aggressive vocals and it feels absolutely built for an arena. This track is where I really feel like I can start to visualise what December’s tour is going to look like. After that, we get a small bass-driven section with Serge screaming “Tell me that you’re alright / Walk towards the guru.” Then we’re thrown back into that trance-like instrumental section from the Instagram clip, before another couple of verses. Eventually, the track rounds itself off with a repetitive beat that reminds me a lot of the ending of ROCKET FUEL. Sonically, it doesn’t really sound like Vlad The Impaler, but for me, this song lives in exactly the same house. It’s that quintessential Kasabian “This shouldn’t work, but we’re gonna do it anyway” vibe. Incredible stuff.
npc 3m12
npc 3m12 follows THE GURU AND THE CRYPTO TIME MACHINE and is basically a simple synth loop. It sounds very much like some of the Sergery clips we got around the releases of Velociraptor! and 48:13, like BB001. It’s got that strange, moody electronic feel to it. The sort of thing you’d hear soundtracking a banned Sega Mega Drive game that can now only be found somewhere on the dark web.
GLIDE
GLIDE comes next and is a much spacier track, very much in the vein of s.p.s or THE S.L.P’s Meanwhile… In The Silent Nowhere. This is probably one of the hardest tracks on the whole record to describe. It starts with Serge using more of his old-school crooning vocal delivery. The opening is largely just acoustic guitar and Serge’s vocals before Ian’s drums start gradually building into the track, and the drums here are really interesting. They’re almost bluesy, which gives the whole thing a very different feel to most of the rest of the album. Around halfway through, we’re met with another synthetic section, and this whole part of the track feels very much like we’re taken down a path like T.U.E. or, again, Silent Nowhere. There’s also a tiny section buried in here where the piano sounds strangely similar to Robbie Williams’ Feel. Which, before anybody jumps on my back, is not a bad thing. As the song goes on, more and more strings start coming into it and the whole thing gradually swells until Serge finishes us off with “The silence is heavy / It’s the truth that I feel / So let me be whole / Like these bones / We glide and we shimmer.” On my first listen, I genuinely thought GLIDE might be the song I wasn’t going to click with, but after a few full spins of the album, I’m on board. Within ACT III as a whole, it fits perfectly.
HYPER//RISING
HYPER//RISING is the penultimate track of the album and is almost as if Kasabian somehow stole an unreleased Black Sabbath song. The guitar, the rhythm, the lyrics and even Serge’s vocal delivery all sound like they could have come from a Sabbath track. The song opens with some really heavy drums which aren’t a million miles away from Queens of the Stone Age’s No One Knows. Then Serge comes in with “Hyper rising in the universe / I am a god, you’ll see” which I’m sure will entertain the least intelligent corner of the internet once they find out those lyrics. The whole thing is really upbeat and high tempo. As far as straight-up rock songs go, this is a much heavier side of Kasabian than we haven’t explored too much. There’s also definitely a bit of Muse’s Uprising floating around in there, helped massively by the number of “hey” chants throughout the song. It feels big, heavy and clearly designed to work live. Overall, I like it and I think it fits the album well. I don’t think it’ll end up being one of my absolute favourites on the record, but it does exactly what it needs to do before the album takes a complete left turn for the final track.
SAY YOU (CLOSER)
To close the album out, we have SAY YOU (CLOSER), and this feels like it was written to become somebody’s funeral song (in a good way.) It’s a complete 180 from HYPER//RISING and has massive Beatles vibes. This is the emotional singalong at the end of the record, closing things out much in the same way British Legion or Put Your Life On It have done in the past. It’s not exactly Kasabian’s most challenging song, but it doesn’t need to be because it is just supposed to be beautiful. Lyrically, it feels like a conversation between Serge and somebody who has been lost “You lived your life, did your dreams all come true? / I’ll walk over mountains, I’ll carry your flame.” Much like s.p.s closing out 48:13, this feels like the end of a night out, but not quite the same ending. s.p.s feels like the final two people standing at the end of the night finally looking at each other and deciding it’s probably time to go to bed. SAY YOU (CLOSER) is the soundtrack to the friends who stayed up until 6am to watch the sun rise at Glastonbury’s Stone Circle. Nobody needs to decide the night is over because they made it through to Sunday already. It’s a genuinely beautiful way to close the album, and if you put the album on repeat, it flows perfectly back into quiet on set please 1m9.
Final thoughts
Overall, ACT III is an incredibly strong addition to Kasabian’s back catalogue. I’m hesitant to immediately start calling it an absolute classic alongside albums like Kasabian and West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, but I’d comfortably rank it among the band’s stronger records, alongside Velociraptor!, 48:13 and The Alchemist’s Euphoria. For me, though, the biggest thing with ACT III is that this really isn’t an album you should listen to by jumping around between individual tracks. Start from the beginning, listen to the interludes, don’t skip the tracks you already know, just let the tracks flow into each other, because that’s where a lot of this record really works. The transitions matter, the weird little instrumental bits matter. Everything has it’s place and nothing is there just to flesh the record out. Some tracks make more sense because of what comes before them, and some work because of where they take you next.
From the opening of quiet on set please 1m9 right through to SAY YOU (CLOSER), ACT III feels like a cinematic soundtrack. It’s like one complete body of work, and that’s probably the biggest compliment you can give an album. Don’t get me wrong, this album probably isn’t bringing lapsed fans back, but I believe this is a reward for the ones that stuck with Kasabian.