Joe's Big Toe

HADOUKEN!‘s Music for an Accel­er­ated Cul­ture was released nearly two years ago, and quickly estab­lished itself as some­thing a bit dif­fer­ent. Over a grimy, punky, dirty back­ing, HADOUKEN! layered socially rel­ev­ant — and funny, lyr­ics which cer­tainly made a big impres­sion on me. I don’t really know how I’d describe it… but it seemed to work really well, appealling to all kinds of music fan. With Music for an Accel­er­ated Cul­ture, they cut through the genre dividers, and gained a lot of sup­port from all kinds of people. We were warned, though, that For The Masses was music­ally and lyr­ic­ally very dif­fer­ent. They weren’t kid­ding. Music­ally, NOISIA’s influ­ence can be heard through­out the album. Their sound has moved much closer to Drum and Bass now, and this album does not have any­thing like the kind of across-the-board appeal that the pre­vi­ous one did. And I’m dis­ap­poin­ted. I really wanted to like it, I did. I tried hard. But, with every new track that came on, I just couldn’t stop think­ing of Music for an Accel­er­ated Cul­ture, and mak­ing com­par­is­ons. And, in my opin­ion, For The Masses loses every time.