Atari Teenage Riot @ The Electric Ballroom, London

Nine years after Atari Teenage Riot's acrimonious split, no-one, particularly their fans, could have imagined their return to the reunion circuit. But return they have, and what a time to come back! In those nine years we’ve seen politics all but airbrushed from music, give or take pop baboon Gary Barlow mumbling about how he intended to vote Conservative. Less than 24 hours after Britain's sham election, the anarcho-insurrectionist group must have found the political landscape infinitely weirder than the fact they had reformed.
Or had they reformed? Band leader Alec Empire and late-period ATR noisemaker Nic Endo are both on stage, but female vocalist Hanin Elias is absent (unsurprisingly, given recent online spats) and most weirdly of all, MC Carl Crack (who died in 2001) is replaced with a lookalike - and soundalike - rapper!

So with only 50% of the original members, could this really be said to be Atari Teenage Riot? Or should they have called themselves 'The Atari Teenage Riot Experience' (like all those tragic ‘60s groups do these days)?

It matters little, firstly because since their last gig a decade ago, visual technology has improved to the extent that the billion dollar lighting rig makes it almost impossible to see the band (unless your hobby happens to be staring directly into 100 watt lightbulbs for hours before attempting to read black text printed on charcoal coloured paper).

Secondly because put simply, ATR aren’t like any other band. They’re the only group that could have cut a record with Rage Against The Machine and have it be their meekest recording. They’re the only group that iTunes have censored on the grounds that their music could create riots!

Ten years and several line up changes makes no difference to tonight’s immediate onslaught of rave, punk, screaming and pounding gabba. The finale consists of the fiercest white noise squall of the evening, and the audience's reaction (moshing, screaming, crowdsurfing, shoes flying through the air) seems to indicate they don’t care either. Unless they happened to be avid lightbulb starers, of course.

Photos: Annabel Staff