Three Trapped Tigers' Adam Betts drums like it's the end of the world on solo debut

Drummers are invariably the most maligned of all band members, too often dismissed as base instrumentalists by their melodic counterparts. And while handing over the creative reigns to popular sticksmen in the past has bought us masterworks like No Jacket Required, it has also brought us Keith Moon’s pub karaoke meltdown Two Sides of the Moon.

That said, anyone familiar with Three Trapped Tigers will approach drummer Adam Betts’ new record with heavy anticipation. TTT are a band sustained by brilliant, chaotic rhythm, and over their eight years on Blood and Biscuits, Betts has had a space to push his artistry to a limit arguably beyond most musicians.

Colossal Squid is a fitting title for his solo offering. Brewing electronica, metal, industrial and braindance, its ringing snares, icy synths and curveball atonality recall the nominal reference to sci fi b-movies.

The stuttering first bars of opener "Drumbones" tell you everything you need to know about its direction; a loop of gated, terse drum samples collapses into a cavernous breakbeat, like a window smashed open. Centerpiece "Aneek" combines a full-on technical freakout with the glassy mallets of Vespertine-era Bjork, while "Winbop" recalls Nine Inch Nails in all its barking industrial glory.

Drums are the thing here. But in what appears to be a carefully edited and comparatively short album, every ounce of melodic content has reason and rhyme. Track five - "Hero Shit" - is probably the best example of this; using only a handful of chords and one chopped vocal sample, Betts captures the kind of breathless euphoria you'd expect at the apex of an Ibiza club classic. While the word epic has been thoroughly ruined through popular usage and Money Supermarket adverts, you'd struggle to find a more fitting synonym.

From a purely nerdy perspective, it's particularly interesting to see where Betts' technical set up has – and hasn’t – influenced his sound. Having previously recorded a version of Colossal Squid in a series of London studios, the finished version is actually a live recording, with Betts running several drum triggers and an SDP-SX sampler into Ableton. Working within a pretty metronomic setup could have stifled the record's emotional force, but Betts manages to play around the rigidity of each click and delay, injecting heart - and guts - into a palette that could easily become stark and mechanical.

It's at this intersection of function and flesh - the unfeeling execution of the machines versus the joyful abandon of their master - where Colossal Squid truly shines. Drum nuts will salivate over the way in which Betts has managed to fuse himself with his gear, but for anyone else, it'll be a pleasure just to hear him play drums like it’s the end of the world.