Sergio Pizzorno bounces around in a half-ruffled/half-tassled all-denim getup that makes him look like he escaped from a Scissor Man attack at a Primark factory. Whenever he’s not bouncing, he’s kneeling or leaning, peacocking with a ceaseless desire to see mosh pits erupt in front of him. The crowd, spilling far out of the packed Woodsey Tent at Glastonbury, are all too happy to oblige, a sea of hopping loons oftentimes obscured by flare smoke shouting back almost every single word of the 13-song surprise set like it’s Kasabian’s 2014 headline slot all over again.

Based on the TV footage (admittedly an unreliable metric), this secret set draws a bigger crowd than Woodsey’s headliners that night, Sleaford Mods, and many Pyramid Stage acts playing throughout the weekend. A week from tonight, Kasabian will play to an estimated 35,000 people at their hometown Summer Solstice II show in Leicester’s Victoria Park, a decade on from when they played the same venue to almost 50,000 people. Just under a week on from that, the band will notch their seventh consecutive UK #1 album, Happenings, knocking Taylor Swift’s deathless The Tortured Poets Department from its perch, whilst also announcing an arena tour with the Streets whose tickets go for £70 pre-fees.

All this likely reads as utter madness to anyone who does not live in Britain, and maybe even to some who do live in Britain. “Kasabian? The ‘Club Foot’ guys from 2004? They’re still going? And didn’t their frontman get done for domestic assault four years ago? How are those guys that big?!”

All fair questions. We may live in an age where any moderately successful indie act from the 2000s is able to maintain a steady touring career banking on nostalgia, but you don’t see Razorlight (who, fun fact, have more UK #1 singles than Kasabian) booking their explicit Greatest Hits tour at venues bigger than a mid-sized O2 Academy, let alone their new album cycle. And the number of those bands who managed to keep going with a similar-ish level of success after justifiably sacking their frontman can be counted on one hand. Like the musical cockroach, Kasabian are highly localized, and seemingly nothing short of a nuclear blast will be able to kill their popularity – even then, I think there’s a high probability Britain’s Mad Max wastelands will have people chanting the riff to “Underdog” as they ride shiny and chrome toward Valhalla.

So, why? What’s the everlasting appeal in a band whose sell-by date theoretically should’ve been the same as Nuts Magazine (which coincidentally closed its doors a month before Kasabian’s fifth album release)? And how did they become Britain’s one-time biggest band? After all, they’re just dumb lad rock, right? Music for football hooligans and terrace chants? You can search up Serge on YouTube and three of the first four results are videos of him scoring goals dubbed “RIDICULOUS” and “screamer” and “Wonder Goal.” They’ve had a single premiere on the soundtrack to a FIFA Football game (“L.S.F.” on the GOAT-ed tracklist for FIFA 2004).

Well, yes and no. Kasabian definitely fit the description of lad rock in the sense that every single album is good for multiple jock jams almost custom-made to sync with Match Of The Day goal-scoring montages. Their first two albums in particular — 2004’s self-titled, released 20 years ago today, and 2006’s Empire — are XTRMNTR and Evil Heat-era Primal Scream for people who liked that band’s inclusion on the Football Factory soundtrack but don’t care for the explicit politicking of Bobby Gillespie. Despite being named after the infamous Manson Family getaway driver, styling their early visuals after Soviet bloc resistance symbols, and dropping the war-desertion video for “Empire” deep in the post-hangover backlash to the invasion of Iraq, this is more often than not resolutely apolitical music.

I’ve been a fan of this band for almost all 20 of the years they’ve existed, and there are maybe five songs in their entire discography where I can confidently tell you what the fuck co-vocalists Tom Meighan and Pizzorno are singing about. Finding out that Pizzorno wrote most of his early lyrics whilst on LSD explains a lot. But it’s not so much about what they’re saying. More often than not, it’s better that they sing absolute nonsense about “polyphonic prostitutes” and “see[ing] the white of your eyes, I am a stuntman,” cos the times when Pizzorno fancies himself a commentator on modern living are deeply embarrassing. Actual bridge lyrics from 2009 single “Where Did All The Love Go?” written about the country’s rising knife crime rates: “The rivers on the pavement/ Are flowing now with blood/ The children of the future/ Are drowning in the flood.” (I found this very profound at age 14, I cannot lie.)

No, in the lad rock tradition, it’s about how they make you feel. Giant fuck-off choruses, riffs that you can chant along to, raucous energy hitting in your gut, a dumb machismo sensation that makes you feel like an invincible giant, and a shameless committed self-belief from the people making it that their music matters. Kasabian arrived at a point where such a gap in the British music scene needed filling. The Libertines were already broken up by the time Kasabian dropped. Oasis – whom the band frequently got compared to, and became best friends with, but I’d argue only had a superficial resemblance musically – weren’t much longer for this world. Britain’s other major rock acts were still in the post-Coldplay mold of sensitive Radio 2 pop types like Keane. For as much as the more serious side of the music press had little time for a band of hyper-masculine shit-stirrers insistent of their own greatness and not above verbal punch-ups with their contemporaries, the tabloid-y side couldn’t get enough of them. Even I can admit that it’s fun to have characters like that around the music scene, lest things get too dry.

Yet, it’s an also an image they bristled against: the idea that they’re, to quote one Guardian readers’ poll around the release of 2009’s West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, “proppa stoopid.” And I get why that would irk them, more than just generally being called dumb, because even at the start they were more musically adventurous than, say, the Enemy or (later down the line and somehow playing stadiums) Catfish And The Bottlemen. Again, their first two albums are early-2000s Primal Scream traces right as that band made their second ill-fated attempt to be the Rolling Stones. Kasabian embraced hip-hop beats way earlier and more enthusiastically than their contemporaries, such as early single “Processed Beats” or the Beastie Boys-aping “Vlad The Impaler” off West Ryder, which was produced by Dan The Automator. “Empire” saw the tried-and-true lad rock move of adding a string section for additional grandiosity, but few other lad rock bands would make those strings Moroccan in flavor and pair them with an ominous beatless breakdown which sucks all the air out in high tension before the track crashes back in.

From West Ryder, their first album with songwriting entirely handled by Pizzorno after guitarist/co-founder Chris Karloff left early into the Empire sessions, and 2011’s Velociraptor!, there’s a much greater effort at sonic experimentation outside of the big flaming bangers. Admittedly, they aren’t all winners. “Acid Turkish Bath” is a titular concept in search of a song, “Thick As Thieves” tries some Kinks cosplay that’s too kitschy to work, and “I Hear Voices” is a slice of electropop which shows up the severe limitations of Meighan’s voice even before he’s asked to sing, “They hunt for rabbits just like Yosemite Sam.”

But, godammit, they’re willing to take the swing despite risk of embarrassment, and that’s charming. “West Ryder Silver Bullet” is, shit you not, a murder ballad duet with Rosario Dawson of all people. Do you see the Pigeon Detectives sampling Helmut Zacharias’ “Sakura Sakura” for a smoky psychedelia number? Cos that’s what Kasabian did for “Secret Alphabets,” one of their best deep cuts. “Neon Noon” is the gorgeous finale ballad on Velociraptor! that so perfectly captures the sensation of a rising and falling sun I had it as my alarm for well over a year. Then there’s the Morricone of it all, arguably the band’s other primary creative lodestar during their most famous period, whether that be spiritually – as on bonkers Empire closer “The Doberman,” which eats the lunch of Muse’s own 2006 album-closing Morricone pastiche – or plagiaristic-ally – as with the chorus guitar work on “Days Are Forgotten” which blatantly borrows the piano intro to “The Ecstasy Of Gold.”

Even the best of these results aren’t exactly Björk in terms of inaccessibility – Pizzorno is too in love with aforementioned big fuck-off choruses and easy melodies for that. But they do demonstrate a refusal to talk down to their audience in the way that other lad rock and landfill indie bands would. Whilst they may talk about “saving guitar music” and other such shite, Kasabian are at least aware that rock is more than generic four-on-the-floor guitar bashing. Not every fan is going to listen to an album like West Ryder and immediately follow it down the rabbit hole of influences to classic Can records, but that’s still more than can be said for their contemporaries and it’s a seed which may bloom later in life. I know it did for me; West Ryder was one of my desert island discs as a burgeoning music nerd for years due to that very mix of towering straight-ahead dance-rock anthems and a beginner’s guide to psychedelic music.

And then there are the live shows, perhaps the most important foundation for their ascent. Across four different British music industry awards bodies, they’ve been nominated Best Live Act 11 times (winning three) for a reason. That swaggering confidence, those energetic dance-indebted drops, those giant riffs and nonsense lyrics, that titanic crowd-pleasing energy — they all best manifest onstage, surrounded by several thousand people going absolutely mental. When he was still in the band, Meighan would stride across the width of the stage like a pitbull, barking out lyrics with total conviction and constantly outstretching his arms to the side to whip up a crowd into maximum “let’s ‘ave it!” frenzy. Pizzorno would work almost like a hypeman with a side hustle as a guitar hero, bouncing around guitar in hand and constantly bantering with Meighan like the two were brothers. Meanwhile, drummer Ian Matthews would pound his kit with the glee of a toddler playing with their first plastic drums, and bassist Chris Edwards would keep a calming energy of his own to stage-side. (I’ve not talked much about either member in this write-up because Pizzorno and Meighan’s personalities naturally crowd out the conversation, but they are still a dependable rhythm section who keep songs on-track.)

When I finally built up the autistic confidence to start going to gigs, Kasabian were one of my top priorities. On the final night of their 2014 tour for 48:13, I crammed myself into the standing area of Sheffield Arena, surrounded on all sides by typical blokes, and proceeded to get my shit absolutely wrecked at the opening drop of “bumblebeee” — my first moshpit experience. It was exhilarating, borderline life-changing, and more than a little terrifying. I’d been apprehensive going in for fear that it would be full of obnoxious dickheads and laaaaads whom I, a then-closeted pansexual enby, wouldn’t feel safe around, but the pit was actually super-supportive and encouraging. I distinctly remember, during the build of main set-ender “Fire” where everyone is ordered to kneel right down low in preparation for the drop, a couple of guys giving a rousing pep talk to those of us who felt like death after nearly two hours of going hard and keeping us on our feet so we wouldn’t risk getting crushed. In hindsight, it’s a nice reminder that not all lad music is incompatible with healthy masculinity; that sometimes it’s good to just release that inner id in an organized and consenting arena like a moshpit. It was, after a decade of build-up, everything I hoped it’d be.

Those good times wouldn’t last. The wheels were already starting to come off with 48:13, which returned to the electronic dance-rock of their debut with extremely mixed results – where enormous highs like “bumblebeee” and “treat” met state-of-the-nation-commenting career lows like “glass” and the infamous “eez-eh.” But 2017’s follow-up For Crying Out Loud was an outright brick creatively (if not quite commercially), the first Kasabian release you could call outright boring, derivative, lifeless. Twelve tracks of heatless meat-and-potatoes lad rock well past its sell-by date without a single noteworthy moment to its name.

Then, a few months into the 2020 lockdown, Tom Meighan pleaded guilty to assaulting his then-fiancée-now-wife and was summarily kicked out of the band. Even with the swift response – right down to removing him from the band’s touring and merch companies, minimizing his royalty payments from Kasabian’s continued existence – that news pretty much iced my fandom for the next few years. Meighan may not have written a single word or note of the band’s music over their existence, but it was still deeply uncomfortable to hear an admitted abuser sing lines like “The blood on my hands, I just wanted you near me” or tell us how he’s a “fast fuse” whose “fist [is] dropping off your reign.” Kasabian now represented a kind of masculinity I wanted to avoid, a blind machismo and ignorance which ran counter to my burgeoning open femininity – a fear that, despite evidence to the contrary and it being the most nonsensical kind of catastrophizing, hanging around Kasabian fans could lead to me being clocked as queer and getting my head kicked in. A relic of a very awkward teenage period. It’s not like the band would be around for much longer, anyway.

And yet… Here we are. Kasabian are back to playing arenas, scoring #1 albums, and I’m 2,000-odd words deep into writing seriously about them. How? Why? Goodwill from the aforementioned response to Meighan’s abuse charge certainly helps, making it somewhat easier to appreciate the art without condoning the man singing it after time away. Pizzorno stepping up to be full-time frontman – a position he, despite insisting otherwise in the press cycle for 2022 comeback record The Alchemist’s Euphoria, had clearly been prepping for as each album saw him take more and more lead vocal duties – is also a factor. A subliminal but loud statement that this has always been his band and his songs first and foremost, which the actions of one man aren’t going to ruin.

Their releases in Kasabian mk. 2 haven’t been too bad either. Alchemist is by far their most interesting release since Velociraptor!, flitting from electronic space-rock to slowthai-ish rap to Prodigy-esque speaker rattlers on a track-by-track basis; its hit-and-miss rate is about similar to their heyday with less potent hits, but it’s good to hear them trying again. And if Happenings is a For Crying Out Loud-style MOR pop pivot, at least Pizzorno brought some real hooks with him this time. Both albums indicate a creative resurgence, an acceptance of their transition into indie elder statesmen influencing the younger generation – “Starburster” is the first Fontaines D.C. song I’ve actually liked, and it’s a rewrite of Kasabian’s “Cutt Off”; I will not be elaborating further. But the transition also comes with the knowledge that said position gives them room to try some new things, since people will still turn out in their droves to hear “Fire” and “L.S.F.” and “Club Foot” and all the rest.

Watching that Glastonbury set at home, as the band bashed out anthem after anthem with a never-ending backing chorus of fans, I was reminded of what drew me to Kasabian in the first place all those years ago. That swagger, that confidence, those hooks and riffs, that primal dumb fun side of my brain which feels like a conquering god as it yells back the words to “Shoot The Runner” alongside however many people. There have been many other British bands in the years since aiming to have that same populist effect, and the vast majority of them failed or flamed out because they simply weren’t as interesting or energetic. If anything, this new act of Kasabian allows them to more favorably rewrite their legacy in British indie canon: a deceptively more resilient, accomplished, and adventurous band than their detractors assumed. And even if that doesn’t stick, “Club Foot” being one of the all-time jock jams is still a fine legacy in its own right.