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Hadouken! - 'Declaration Of War'

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Fraser McAlpine | 09:14 UK time, Saturday, 26 April 2008

Hadouken!That's an interesting title for a Hadouken! song, isn't it? Everything the band has released so far, from the scenester-baiting 'That Boy, That Girl' to the hedonistic 'Liquid Lives' has already sounded like a battle line drawn between the band and anyone who isn't a) young b) wild or c) one of their sort of people. It's a classic pose for a new musical act, pretending that you are the keeper of a new set of standards, and anyone who fails to meet them is your mortal enemy. My Chemical Romance did it too, only without as much day-glo streetwear...

I was going to characterise these standards as an Us Against The World mentality, except for the unfortunate resonance that has with the song by Westlife. And no matter what you have to say about that lot, causing aggro and creating a community of like-minded hell-raisers has never been what they are all about.

So, back to the 'Douks and their aggressive rabble-rousing. The interesting thing about them choosing to call this song 'Declaration Of War' and fill it with references to battles and fighting, is that it's the first song they've put out in which they sound anything but defiant and argumentitive.

If anything, the entire band sound fed up, bruised and defeated, which is surely the wrong frame of mind to go into a battle with, even one which they did not start. And that's what makes them immediately more interesting than the one-dimensional scenester-mocking sneeroids that they first seemed to be.

That and the fact that they use synthesizers the way road diggers use pneumatic drills. Anyone got an aspirin?

Four starsReleased: April 28th

(Fraser M)

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