Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
Mon 12 December
The dubstep and grime-loving hip-hop crew return to their hometown at the end of a tour which has seen them travel up and down the UK. Astroid Boys’ style is full of lairy South Wales humour and energized aggression and dripping with menace in the beats that use original dubstep grottiness, square-wave grime bass and even jagged nu-metal guitars.
There’s surely some influence from the rap-rock styles of Cypress Hill and N*E*R*D, but their closest sonic cousins have got to be Virus Syndicate and Foreign Beggars – both hip-hop crews with a strong kinship to dance music, whether dubstep, grime or drum’n’bass. They dropped a new single this year, Fallback, which fuses their favourite genres more completely than ever before: Playstation grime claps sparking off distorted power chords and dipping into subby half-step interludes, with the lyrics spitting out a perfectly Cardiffian mix of aggro and humour.
It’s not just about Astroid Boys though, there’s plenty more MCs and crews on offer here to draw heads in. Neverland Clan are billed as “London’s gnarliest boyband,” and described irritatingly by i-D magazine as “the most right-now group of right-now.” Manga – a long time member of famous London grime crew Roll Deep – makes an appearance, along with Sonny Double 1, a younger MC making waves à la Stormzy, plus Mace aka Mason Burnett, and Grove Street Families, a hardcore band from Southampton.
Tickets: £8. Info: 029 2023 2199
words GWYN THOMAS DE CHROUSTCHOFF