Scottish Albums of the Decade #3: Primal Scream - XTRMNTR

It's easy to cast the mind back to the dawning of the millennium and perhaps fondly recall a pre-9/11 sense of optimism and renewal – I mean, the bug didn't get us after all (up yours Nostradamus!). But was the outlook ever really so rosy? Certainly, the arrival of XTRMNTR slap bang in the middle of the January 2000 hangover was a stark indication that Bobby Gillespie and Co. must have felt otherwise. Having reacted to the phenomenal success of the rock 'n rave groundbreaker that was Screamadelica by hoovering up every narcotic in sight and passing themselves off as an ill-advised Rolling Stones tribute act for much of the nineties, the band had revitalised both their line-up and sound with 1997's Vanishing Point.

The dance rhythms on that particular album were a portent of what was to come, but when the first single off XTRMNTR, Swastika Eyes, was released in late 1999, it seems nobody had quite been prepared for what boiled down to angular, explosive RAGE. In a nutshell, Primal Scream had served up a bleak dystopic vision of the consequences of failing to stand up and fight 'The Man' (Gillespie himself said it was specifically aimed at 'American International Terrorism') to the bitter end. Lyrically, it was a series of epithets ('No civil disobedience', 'Subvert normality', 'Rain down fire on everyone / Scabs, police, government thieves') seemingly lacking in cohesion but laden with ire; disjointed and disconcerting all at once.

Musically, the Scream were aided and abetted by an impressive cast of producers. The Chemical Brothers, Jagz Kooner and, wonderfully, Kevin Shields were no doubt instrumental in ensuring that whatever actual musical style the band took on from track-to-track (from punk, to acid-jazz, house and funk), it all sounded like it had been recorded, and infected by, a large-scale munitions factory.