Skunk Anansie

THEY may be part of the new Britpop pack, but Skunk Anansie look further afield than Camden or Manchester for their grunge-metal reference points. Unfortunately, they seem to have gotten stuck in Seattle, somewhere around the time that Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love became an item. Lead singer Skin is nothing like Love, being black, bald and lesbian, but her voice can surpass even the most angst ridden roar of the American alterno-rock siren. Prowling the SFX stage like a punked-up-panther, Skin pounces on every line and claws it to shreds.

The band know how to cut up onstage too, and their thundering delivery disguises the weakness in Skunk Anansie's songwriting, camouflaging some of the more unwieldy tunes behind a swirling tornado of sound. Guitarist Ace flips the fingers over some classic riffs, twisting them to suit his own nefarious ends, while dreadlocked bassist Cass slaps out the subsonic frequencies till they're battered and bruised. Drummer Mark kicks the beat in the head while it's down and dirty.

Despite the surfeit of strength on offer, however, Skunk Anansie didn't manage to lift the crowd over the metal threshold and onto a higher, more satisfying level. Weak was a valiant attempt at flexing the muscle while baring the soul, but it couldn't decide whether to be delicate or destructive. She's My Heroine tried to raise the banner for women, but the feminist flag snagged at half-mast. Intellectualise My Blackness was an overt, somewhat crude attempt to inject a complex political message into a simplistic pop structure, but Little Baby Swastika pulled it off by painting the ugly face of neo-Nazism in plain colours.