20.45, Radio 1 Stage

When HUNDRED REASONS’s ‘EP2’ first landed, I could be heard exclaiming: “Woo-hoo! It’s Surrey’s answer to At The Drive-In!” Two years later, and the EP’s lead track ‘Remmus’ is the stand-out moment in a set of uberslick stadium metal specially crafted for The Kidz, whereas ATD-I’s Cedric Bixler and Omar Rodriguez were creating absurdly complex, unwieldy and ambitious jazz-prog-punk on the very same stage just two hours before, as part of The Mars Volta. Hundred Reasons, it pains me to say, have beaten a hasty retreat from becoming anything genuinely interesting. Since I last saw them, they’ve done away with their ‘Final Countdown’ intro tape, preferring music from ‘Monty Python And The Holy Grail’ instead, but the skeleton of a well-established set remains unchanged (‘I’ll Find You’ to kick things off, lighters-out ballad ‘Falter’ and ‘If I Could’ to bring things to a close) and vocalist Colin Doran is as goofy as ever. In their own limited terms, they rock – but, judging the new material in the same terms, it may well be worrying them that they haven’t managed to hit on anything as anthemic as on debut LP Ideas Above Our Station.