Credit: Jorg Kollegger

Alec Empire has always been a challenging artist – until recently he has battered audiences with unholy blends of breakcore and white noise in an uncompromising roar of defiance at convention. But tonight he is challenging his audience in an altogether new way – by peddling something altogether more audibly palatable. The crowd at Camden’s Dingwalls have grown to love the screeching, relentless pounding mash of noise and beats, first from Empire’s old unit, Atari Teenage Riot, and then through his solo albums. But by going almost….mainstream, he’s giving his faithful  true test of allegiance.

Striding onstage to the menacing synths of ‘Ice (As If She Could Steal A Piece Of My Glamour’, it seems apt that clad entirely in black and masked behind a pair of sunglasses, Empire looks as glacial and glamorous as he ever has. For most other musicians, to walk onstage like an automaton in shades could be perceived as the height of pretension or the most affected attempt at rockstar cool. But for Empire, to change his stage presence from a malevolent, seething, snarling creature into this is just another step in differentiating just how much his most recent record, ‘The Golden Foretaste of Heaven’, deviates from the template set by his releases on Digital Hardcore. The wordless rage of old has been surplanted, by all-the-more precise malevolent electronics.

At first the crowd struggle to connect with this new Alec Empire - you can feel the urge to engage with the new material in the fans, and at times it penetrates deeply and pockets of violent movement spurt out from corners of the crowd. In a slightly my-eyes-must-be-lying moment, Empire starts robot-dancing ‘Robot L.O.V.E’ – the sight of which probably hasn’t been seen onstage since Empire was a teenage breakdance champion (no, really) in West Berlin.

Then suddenly it just clicks. It’s as if everyone in the venue suddenly took an almighty, supersonic slap to the mental chops. From the heart-attack beats of

‘Down Satan Down’ to the more minimalist-techno of ‘Bug On My Windshield’, right through to the Numan-esque anthem of ‘New Man’, it doesn’t just make sense, it makes perfect sense. This is an record that so forward thinking it probably can't even remember what the concept of yesterday is anymore.