Dub Pistols – Worshipping The Dollar

Dub Pistols are a force to be reckoned with live, and in the setting of a summer festival there are few better bands to rock out to, with their crowd-pleasing blend of reggae, rap and drum and bass. Unfortunately their strengths are also their downfall. Worshipping The Dollar is a turgid, uninspiring album. Over-earnest grime pretender Akala delivers a staid, utterly safe anti-war verse on West End Stories, daring to suggest that the USA is – gasp – a warmongering capitalist state.

Elsewhere, Rodney P offers a tale about getting drunk, coked-up and shagged in a VIP bar over standard, unimaginative 1998-style d&b and clichéd dub horns on the execrable, bordering-on-offensive Mucky Weekend. Lindy Layton, ex of Beats International, is wheeled out for some bland, over-FX’d pop-dross-meets-reggae on Rocksteady. The problem with Worshipping The Dollar is that you’ve heard it all already: the rhymes are lazy, the production cribbed from obvious reggae standards. It is a dull, tedious affair, showing a lack of imagination and effort. Avoid, avoid, avoid. [Bram Gieben]