★★★☆☆

It’s little surprise the album cover for What Came Before, Chase & Status’ sixth studio album, depicts the mad flurry of a rave many of us will experience this summer. Now that we can once more, after all.

This is an album full of bangers that will no doubt fill sets throughout festival season. There are tracks for many genres – only this lack of coherency is where the album is lacking overall.

That image, incidentally, was taken from a secret rave the electronic duo had held in late 2021; a rave in which they’d banned phones to try and capture people in their rawest emotional form. It embodies what most people think of when they consider Chase & Status, ever since their hit-filled (or Hitz-filled) debut, No More Idols, released in 2011.

That album famously began telling us there was ‘No Problem’ (or, more specifically, it’s “no problem for me, but it’s a problem for you”). This latest album begins with a similarly emphatic message: ‘Don’t Be Scared’.

This mish mash of drum and bass, jungle and acid house, on reflection, becomes a strong representative of the album as a whole, mixing a variety of genres; it’s also a clear marker for the album’s intro, as the eerie voice beckons you to “come with me”.

‘Go’ and ‘Censor’ don’t add much beyond what we’ve heard before, but ‘Mixed Emotions’ – track that’s already been released, accompanied by a video (unsurprisingly featuring a rave) – is where the album becomes more interesting. Starting off softly, before breaking out into liquid drum and bass, with soaring vocals from Clementine Douglas, it begins the shift of moving this album beyond being simply music to put on your gym playlist. ‘Over and Done’ works similarly, this time with Pip Millett’s more abrupt vocals.

‘Run Up’, featuring Unknown T, and ‘5AM’ do what they say on-the-tin; the latter having a more house-tech influence that you can picture serving you into the early hours of the morning.

‘Headtop’ is on a par with later ‘Consciousness’ for being my favourite track on the album, in part due to that most interesting of all things: contradiction. Its upbeat lyrics (“Sun ah shine bright it’s a lovely day / I want to be there when the music plays”) combine with an intense, climbing electro.

BackRoad Gee’s feature on ‘When It Rains’ is the best feature on the album (surpassing Unknown T’s, which doesn’t add much to ‘Run Up’ beyond a few repetitive bars). One for summer festivals, too, when, as its title states, it inevitably rains; the bassline one for those gurn faces in the drizzle.

Thankfully, the intro for ‘Hold Your Ground’, with hushed vocals from Ethan Holt, provides at least a moment’s respite. It can’t all be high intensity (though it inevitably does pick up in the track’s conclusion).

‘Blazer’ has a similar ring to Jamie XX’s ‘Gosh’ before ‘Consciousness’ – as stated, my equal favourite – gives an ethereal quality and, once more, provides that bit of space. It offers that brilliant quality found in liquid drum and bass: the ability to be composed but also driven, saxophone and piano playing out over the top.

The album’s closure, ‘Forgive Dark’, does exactly what the opener does: a swirling cacophony of sounds and textures that embodies the album’s mixture. There are undeniably some excellent soundtracks to summer on this album. They will ring out in the speakers (and ears) of many a raver between now and late August. As a collective whole, however, this lacks a consistent thread.

Maybe that’s a wise move. We are, after all, arguably living in an age where the album is dying. More airtime will be given to these tracks on their own. No More Idols showed it can be done, however, and What Came Before doesn’t quite live up to the same mark. Still, worth a rave – as in the album cover.