The Alchemist's Euphoria

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Produced by Serge Pizzorno and Fraser T Smith, mixed by Spike Stent and written by Serge, ‘Scriptvre’ is one of the many standout tracks on their eagerly anticipated new album The Alchemist’s Euphoria on Columbia Records. The eerie indelibility of Days are Forgotten, or Fire’s lumpen power, are missing, leaving the strings of lyrical cliches that Pizzorno ladles up horribly exposed.

It’s the kind of thing you might more readily expect to hear on the Calm app than on the new one from the tub-thumping lad-rockers who barreled in with the rifftastic ‘Club Foot’ back in 2004. The songs that feel more conventional – Strictly Old Skool, for example – come as something of a relief as a result. It is Kasabian's first album in five years, following For Crying Out Loud (2017), and first to feature Serge Pizzorno as a sole lead vocalist after former frontman Tom Meighan was fired in 2020 amid his domestic assault conviction. The seventh Kasabian album nods in those directions without stepping conclusively towards them, and offers up some of the bullish, uptempo rock that sets moshpits roiling. Former frontman Tom Meighan parted ways with the band in July 2020, and the following day pleaded guilty to assaulting his then-fiancée, now-wife Vikki Ager.Produced by Serge Pizzorno and Fraser T Smith, mixed by Spike Stent and written by Serge, ‘Scriptvre’ is one of the many standout tracks on their eagerly anticipated new album ‘The Alchemist’s Euphoria’ unveiled August 5th on Columbia Records. Reviewing the album for The Guardian, Michael Hann felt that the album "goes for broke" and "teems with ideas that don't always land", and despite Pizzorno's "imagination elevat[ing] them above their lad-rock leanings", as a vocalist he is "adequate but unremarkable". Folky acoustic jig ‘Letting Go’ twinkles with the magic dust we’ve come to expect from co-producer Fraser T. Para los amantes de la parte más guitarresca y/o a los que tengan menos ganas de abrir su mente, puede ser un disco generador de displicencia.

Serge, always the chin-stroking auteur to Meighan’s endorphin-inducing rabble-rouser, had to – as he puts it on this album’s ravey ‘SCRVPTURE’ – “reach for the mic as I walk from the shadow”. The group’s resulting seventh album, ‘The Alchemist’s Euphoria’, is a whipsmart collection that pings from classic Kasabian piss-up chant-alongs (scything lead single ‘ALYGATYR’; the tellingly titled ‘ROCKET FUEL’) to starry eyed ballads – with, perhaps surprisingly, the emphasis on the latter.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. On the evidence of this surprising, eclectic and intimate record – which still finds time for the anthems of old – the answer is: as far as they want to.

Because, yes, there is a concept of sorts at the heart of this album, with a Serge-like mystic travelling through the record on a voyage of self-discovery.Pizzorno has as much interest in texture as he does in instrumentation; in making things sound like something else – you’d swear the single Scriptvre opens with an orchestra of ships’ foghorns. Was aber gar nicht geht - auch wenn Kasabian hierauf keinen maßgeblichen Einfluss haben - ist die flächendeckend zunehmend miese Verpackung. It’s easy to forget how thrilling a rock band being unselfconsciously rockist can be, and Kasabian can be as unselfconsciously rockist as the best or worst of them. Smyth described the album as "punchy", writing that "Scriptvre" has "crunching breakbeats and snarling guitars" and "Rocket Fuel" is "a bit silly really, with its mix of rave synths and chanted vocals".