Struggling to spot the difference between one new gang of utilitarian indie grunts and the next? Blame the Enemy. It's not entirely their fault that UK guitar-rock is going through one of its meat-and-potatoes phases, but, as the biggest name of what is not quite a "scene," they must accept responsibility for the Cribs, the Twang and the rest.

The Coventry trio's ascent this year, complete with a No 1 album in We'll Live and Die in These Towns, has been so rapid that the titchy Barfly must still feel more like home than the 4,000-seaters they are playing these days. But the intervening months of success haven't endowed teenage frontman Tom Clarke with so much as an ounce of charisma, and their show is a pub band's show: free of colour and additives.

There is one thing you can say for them, though, and it explains that chart-topping album: they have mastered the art of the anthem. Away From Here and Had Enough, both constructed around terrace-chant choruses, are classic power-trio stuff, and are greeted as such by the crowd. Simple sentiments, forcefully expressed? That will be the Enemy.

But they have serious competition for the fans' love from another British band who have recently outgrown the indie-dive circuit, Hadouken! Singer James Smith is Clarke's polar opposite, a lolloping show-off who lives for the spotlight and spits lyrics like a rapper. There have only been a couple of singles so far, and their album is not due until 2008, but, thanks to Smith and a sound that smashes together rave, hip-hop and indie, they have a reputation as a formidable live act. And rightly so; it's easy to imagine Smith's scattergun delivery resounding through arenas in the near future, perhaps with the Enemy as support act.

· Hadouken! are at the Academy, Bristol (0844 477 2000), on Sunday. Then touring.