Sam Evans’ debut album is unflinchingly direct and will not wilt under pressure. Taking and standing for no nonsense as his hood-up alias insists upon, Tonight We Riot is a template of booming and be-grizzled bottom ends that won’t be driven off course by anything, great samples on Lose It and Mad as Hell (the latter playing mean and moody roll-out, with Vandal growing 6 o’clock shadow of stubble), and synths on a straight and narrow crash course, as on Captain Magic, that enjoy the thrill of potential roadkill from either side of the impact.
Vandal is obviously about my way on the galactic highway; not being one for sightseeing, he simply blasts through, straight as a die, like he’s on a cosmic route 66; one direction and one direction only, afterburners hit on Idiots. Undoubtedly presenting a big sound, Tonight We Riot is intimidating, but after a while you know exactly what means of aggression it’s gonna take, reducing its effectiveness as a result.
Life featuring Malcolm Carson and the Fail With Grace guest Ryan Shuck do breaks’ stock vocals of outsider rock-smeared pop, pointing bony-fingered cruelty and cunning, world domination fawned over as if the globe is a crystal ball. The latter in particular, with its rebel without cause guitars and crisis building leaving whacking great signposts all over it, resorts to cod Depeche Mode type too easily. Obey goes for the female dominatrix option on vox to merely perpetuate more than one breaks stereotype, making Vandal sound desperately short of ideas as the latex-clad lass Odissi exposes the album’s 10-year gestation period.
Smell the Glove, later backed by Tonight We Ride, finds a longed-for set of additional variables, the housier beats and looseness of electro limbs giving much needed latitude from the album’s settling in period. Four tracks in and the album is shaken from its shackles, matched with an upsurge in the closing stages, torching sceptics with a mega wall of deep fried 8-bit synths that’ll take your eyebrows off as Vandal discovers a second wind of delinquency in outer space. It seems at house tempo is where Evans frees himself more – not by much, but enough to make a difference - with the hypnotic loops of They’re Here and The Wolf making for raw and dirty electro/techno jacking, and What Cha Got, by far the album’s shortest track, taking a comfort break with a blend of headstrong electro skittering like a cat on a hot roll of lino.
If you’re a hard-headed sort who wants to feel Vandal’s foot push down on you like he’s having a barney with the rev counter, Tonight We Riot is a model example of breaks’ best components. Evans just about saves the album from a procession of ticked boxes, though admittedly it’s touch and go for a good chunk of a long player that shouldn’t sound so periodically tired given the firepower it brings, gazumped by recalling older singles relinquishing upfront status. Tonight We Riot, tomorrow and the day after, probably not so much.