Make no mistake about it, Brit rockers Kasabian are not content to die wandering. Let's just say that the four piece are unlikely to turn up a few years from now on some reality TV show, musing on what might have been whilst recruiting a new lead singer. Speaking to the NME recently prior to the release of West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, their kaleidoscopically ambitious third album, the band's creative fulcrum of Tom Meighan and Sergio Pizzorno were in little doubt as to the career shaping leap forward it signifies.
"We've put our balls out again". Asylum inmate #1 Pizzorno commented. "No bands do that now... they ain't got the balls, do they?" Added inmate #2 Meighan. Quite.
Experience has taught us that both come from the media friendly Oasis school of professional hubris, and neither has a reverse gear. Reflecting, Pizzorno clearly regards most of the competition these days as also-rans, his blunt assessment of Kasabian's destiny: "This country deserves a better class of rock star".
The four piece burst onto the British music scene in 2004. From the largely unloved city of Leicester, they rapidly became it's most famous sons in much the same way as The Enemy were handed the keys to its similarly drab neighbour Coventry. Released that year, their eponymous debut album pushed against the tide of the then Libertines-obsessed British "Independent" scene and reintroduced the previously betrothed dance and rock to each other on tracks like "Club Foot" and "LSF". Touting a sound that blended hip-hop's truncated beats with porno wah-wah, across the country many who'd been disenfranchised by the Lib's nudge-wink metropolitan obsessions immediately started connectiong with Meighan's, a singer willing to take the mantle of Ian Brown incarnate.
Gestating away from London was to the band's advantage, and whilst Pete Doherty and Carl Barat were conducting their love-hate affair with the music press, Pizzorno and company were quietly shifting half a million records. Three Brit award nominations followed, along with the development of a prime live reputation. A second album, Empire, was released in 2006, but found less widespread acclaim. Unfazed, the camp pointed to sales which surpassed their debut and worldwide spiraled towards the million mark.
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