Tuesday 19/12/06 Kasabian @ Earl's Court, London

The rapid rise of ‘Kasabian as the next Oasis’ continues at pace tonight with a spectacle of unbridled proportions inside the megalithic Earl’s Court – a place so large and so packed with Kasabianites that it almost seems like a mass rally, with the crowd’s black-shirted leaders up on stage sending out wave upon wave of distortion warfare. In fact, Kasabian now seem so at ease with playing to tens of thousands, that it seems laughable to think of their tumultuous sound being blasted at the faces of say, twenty or thirty people, in a shithole venue three years ago. If ever there was a band that had the power and the sound to shatter the vast space in here, then it’s them. Can you imagine Borrell up there half naked in his girly jeans, whining away? He’d be torn apart by this mob – they want beer to throw, and blood to show.

Ripping into the three-sentence wonder that is ‘Shoot The Runner’, Kasabian start as they mean to go on, whipping the place into a frenzy by lashing out ballistic bombshells of skewed industro-rock, with the hyperactive chimp-limbed Tom Meighan making the most of the jungle of the stage, jumping on the monitors and viciously shouting the refrain of ‘Bitch!’ It’s primeval to the say the least. Half way through the song – if you can really call it that, it’s probably more a declaration of war – things go brilliantly neon techno, with the eye-destroying stage lights only adding to their arsenal, and giving way to the terminally danceable ‘Reason Is Treason’.

If Kasabian’s sound owed more to baggy two years ago, what with all the ‘naaaahs’ and bandy-legged ‘attituuuude’, then ’06 sees them come into their own with the release of their second album ‘Empire’, and its title track, which Tom begins by ordering the masses to “pick the fucking room up” as if it wasn’t already. Has anyone seen an entire arena shake before? The gut-pounding riffs off Serge Pizzorno’s Rickenbacker serve as some sort of sonic cattle prod, forcing people to bounce into the air – even on the balconies.

‘Processed Beats’ follows rapidly, and is marched out double time and clashed with ‘Last Trip’, and the place feels more like a Chemical Brothers gig than a supposed night of homage to Happy Mondays. In fact, there’s no other way to describe it than full-on rock-rave of the truly magnanimous variety – like Klaxons might be if they had a mountainous sound and none of that day-glo crap everywhere. Things calm down somewhat during a Serge acoustic number, where people are mostly interested in the bar, but pick up again when Tom introduces ‘The Doberman’ – but not before doffing his metaphorical hat to the Gallaghers. “If it weren’t for Noel an’ Liam,” he declares, “I wouldn’t fookin’ be ‘ere.” Unarguable really. Coming back on for the obligatory sensational ‘Club Foot’ and organ-driven swagger of ‘LSF’, Tom conducts the crowd, Freddie Mercury-style, in chanting – which is still going even at the Earl’s Court station platform twenty minutes later.

Liam ‘n’ Noel be proud – your boys have come of age in a way Proud Mary only ever dreamed of. Let’s hope it continues.