Salmonella Dub: One Drop East

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * *)

On their fifth album it sounds like Salmonella Dub have reached the point where progress and the hybrid energy of One Drop East's two successful predecessors Killervision and Inside the Dubplates has run its natural course.

Always a band who valued their dub-dance-drum'n'bass style over content, here the songs are an especially slight bunch, with some seeming like they - or someone else in the case of Slide with its close echoes of Marley's Get Up, Stand Up - have written them before, and possibly better.

It's hard not to cringe a little at Dancehall Girl's lesson in reggae lyric cliches or when on Nu Steppa, it's announced "We've got the drummer drumming, the bass humming ... " Well, you'd hope so wouldn't you?

Yes, the drum and bass bits are, as always, pleasingly hydraulic, especially on the likes of the Octopus and the groaning electrofunk of Pure.

But even with its occasional rumbles of dub-thunder, One Drop East still feels like the lull after the storm.

Label: Virgin