Horsemeat and Google: The Strange Phenomenon That Is Kasabian

Photo by Steve Collis

We don't have many bands like Kasabian any more. It's politely said about many acts that they "divide" opinion, but Kasabian don't so much divide opinion as attach ropes to it and tear it apart at the waist with a pair of wild horses. Shat on by the critics, adored by their fans, groaned at by everyone else, they are a band that see “creativity" as something that peaked when Liam Gallagher and Ocean Colour Scene's Steve Craddock covered that Jam song that time.

Their fans come in for even more flak. To the internet's critical cognoscenti, Kasabian fans are either clueless Euro-backpackers who'll chant anything as long as they're singing along with a hairy man in a leather jacket, or northern Neanderthals who piss in pint glasses and sing "get your tits out for the lads" at Haim when they're waiting to see their idols at V. Not quite an indie crowd, not quite a Faithless crowd, Kasabian fans are a massive, unchampioned majority who still buy albums and continue to draw the distinction between "real music" and everything that hasn't been created by a white man with a guitar.

I guess you could argue that Mumford & Sons are more hated by the critics, and perhaps they are. But then again, I’m not sure anybody truly loves Mumford & Sons. You imagine the records they sell are destined to sit idly in people's glove compartments and alone in their "recently purchased" iTunes folders – it might be more accurate to say that, rather than fans, Mumford & Sons have admirers. Yes, they headlined Glastonbury, the singer dates a movie star and they’ve sold a ton of records, but who really cares? At the end of the day, they’re private-school God botherers covering songs from fish finger adverts. Nobody's taking the week off work to go see them.

But in 2014, Kasabian fans are still shelling out for cheap hotel rooms near whichever stadium the band happen to be playing that week. They're still getting the band's lyrics and logos tattooed on their arms. They genuinely love the band. They love the music, the haircuts, the fact that they're from Leicester; they love Serge Pizzorno fucking about on Soccer AM in Office winklepickers. They also love that they are mates with Noel Fielding, even if he is "a bit weird".

Photo by Chris Worden

Kasabian are loved because they live the lives that their fans wish they did, that of heterosexual high-street dandies whose meteoric rise has allowed them to ascend to a higher plane of big town indie-club dollies and non-pub gak. They've sold millions of albums and played stadiums when most of their peers have been content to settle with arenas. They're probably headlining next year’s Glastonbury. Kasabian are the E Street Band for the FIFA generation.

The very reminder that Kasabian are still a going concern is enough to cause a minor internet storm. Yesterday, the band released details of their forthcoming album, along with a few sample lyrics to back up their claims of it being a “dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, dangerous drug we’ve created”:

“Horsemeat in the burgers / People commit murders / Everyone’s on bugle / We’re being watched by Google.”

There isn’t even any music to accompany these words yet, but already the internet's tastemakers are ripping them apart. For them, the lyrics confirm everything that they already thought about Kasabian; that they’re stupid, crass, reactionary and don't have a clue who or what Chance The Rapper or Doge is:

I have now been laughing at these new Kasabian lyrics for a solid five minutes. http://t.co/v6FDh6N3hY #bugle #google

— Jack Seale (@jackseale) January 15, 2014

Kasabian tackling the horsemeat scandal on new album. If anyone should know about masquerading as something of greater quality it's them.

— Darren Richman (@darrenrichman) January 15, 2014

@davidemery "Everyone's on bugle, we're being watched by Google" - woah, man.

— Rob Webb (@RobbWebbb) January 15, 2014

But is there any worth in Kasabian? Or are they as bad as everyone would have you believe?

Taken at face value, Kasabian are absolutely that bad. They make dreadful, plodding, bloated lad rock that's surely designed for maximum compatibility with festival crowds and football idents. That said, I sat with their music for a while and tried to figure out who else they sound like. Apart from dressing a bit like the Stones and Tom Meighan sounding a lot like Shaun Ryder, they're kind of a beast of their own. A bit Primal Scream, maybe? A bit Black Rebel Motorcycle Club? It's hard to say. They just sound like Sky Sports, really.

I’ve never been to a Kasabian gig, never even walked past them on the way to see something else at a festival, but their live reputation precedes them, In fact, they happen to boast the accolade of holding Wembley Stadium’s pint-sales record for the shows they played there in 2009. People I know and respect have said that they're amazing live, but is that out of a sense of being genuinely entertained, or just because some of the people I know and respect happen to enjoy taking cocaine and Oasis?

Musically, they may have as much artistic worth as the Twang, but as a cultural force, they carry more weight, and there's something quite fascinating about that. Considering the band and their fanbase, I wondered if they'd managed to capture the imagination of a certain kind of bored, post-industrial male, sort of like the EDL with more hair and catchier songs. Perhaps Kasabian are the band for the same "lost England" that the EDL claim to be the last true defenders of? Not that I'm saying Kasabian are a bunch of racists – in fact, they're almost undoubtedly left wing, albeit in an abstract "Fuck the man, whoever he may be" kind of way. Like everything else about them, their politics are emphatic but they're emphatically vague. They're named after one of the Manson family, but probably because it sounded cool. They had an album called Empire – why? It's a cool word, I guess. These controversial new lyrics about burgers and Google could be interpreted as a kind of new-right treatise on the decline of moral values in Britain, but really, they're just words, aren't they?

Somehow, Kasabian have ended up as outsiders. Mocked for being middle-class Midlands boys by the likes of Ian Brown, yet dismissed as thuggish and stupid by the cool crowd, Kasabian seem to drift in a cultural grey area. Not that this has done them much harm. There's little doubt that the band aim themselves at a type of person who, perhaps like them, feels disenfranchised from both mainstream and hip culture. You can't imagine many Kasabian fans crying at Drake shows or losing their shit to Nguzunguzu.

Another important aspect to the multifaceted enigma that is Kasabian is, of course, aggression. They're not afraid to stick it to anyone, from Bloc Party to George Michael. I wondered if their fans mirrored this element, too; if their gigs ever got rowdy? If they were more like away days than nights out, enormous piss-ups that exist on the precipice of violence at all times?

But looking at this video, it seems not. In fact, looking at a whole bunch of their live videos, it seems their gigs really aren't much different to Coldplay or Kings Of Leon shows, just with far fewer girls in attendance. They are not the corporate parades of Cro-Magnon men I'd imagined; just lethargic, gassy rallies of plaid and denim.

So who are Kasabian? What are they here to do? Who are they for?

The answer can be found on Britain's sofas. In the hopes and dreams of the stereotypical young man that ladvertisers assume every young British male to be – boorish, illiterate, pampered and sedate; bloated on a diet of Carling, Just Eat and Take Me Out. For all their supposed thuggish intent, Kasabian are a pretty tepid affair, as are their fans, seemingly. Pizzorno may talk the big talk about boycotting Starbucks but their fans aren't going to be burning down a public building any time soon, because they all have girlfriends and Domino's have a deal on.

Their music sounds like the slow decline of British industry, looks like an O2 advert and smells like a freshly cracked can of Foster's straight from the mini-fridge. They are shit and they are now. For that, I guess we should try to understand them more deeply than just going "lol they're thick", but that doesn't mean that anyone should have to try to work out what "Shoot the runner, shoot, shoot the runner" means ever again.

Follow Clive on Twitter: @thugclive