They've had rather more time away than the title of their new album, A Hundred Days Off, suggests. It is over two years since Underworld's last UK tour; since then the band has lost a member, Darren Emerson, and the other two, Rick Smith and Karl Hyde, came close to quitting. Consequently, there is a lot at stake on the first date of their national tour. The pair must prove that Underworld are still a post-techno force to reckon with.
On the evidence of this gig, divorce has given Smith and Hyde a remarkable new lease of creative life. When they emerge in front of a giant, silver, padded screen, they are greeted like returning heroes. Despite their reputation for filling dancefloors with manic revellers, Underworld have always been concerned with the texture, mood and emotional force of their tunes. Emerson's departure has not changed that, as tonight's generous sampling of the new album demonstrates, and Hyde's stream-of-consciousness lyrics - when you can hear them over the wildly whooping crowd - are as poignant and poetic as ever.
No one has come to the Brixton Academy for poetry, however. An Underworld live show is about hedonistic abandonment, and the duo have the entire crowd on their feet for almost two hours. It makes for an irresistible, Sensurround experience that suggests armchair sociologists had a point when they called clubbing the new religion. There is an all-inclusive and touchingly generous spirit generated by vocalist and frontman Hyde, who works every inch of the stage, leaping like a crazed salmon, skipping sideways and making like a techno Marcel Marceau.
Grinning from beneath giant headphones, Hyde yells "Lun-derrrn!" like a call to prayer. His glee is contagious, carried out to the faithful in tunes like the new, darkly menacing Dinosaur Adventure and classics such as Rez/Cowgirl. "You bring light in," he intones over and over in the flickeringly beautiful Two Months Off. He could almost be talking about himself and his partner on stage. Clearly, the end is not nigh just yet.
· At the Academy, Bristol, on November 11. Box office: 0870 771 2000. Then touring.
