Kasabian Delay „Act III”, Release Single „Superpowers”

There is an old truth about British rock bands that have survived two decades: the more confident they are in what they make, the less they rush to release it. This week Kasabian proved exactly that, moving the arrival of their ninth album „Act III” from mid-July to early September, and they did it not with an apology but with a gift. Instead of letting fans wait through an empty summer, the band handed over a new single, „Superpowers”, a song that sounds as if it was born in a completely different studio from the one that usually produces their Leicester stadium rock.

A delay is usually a bad sign in the music business, a hint that something has not settled the way it should. With Kasabian the opposite seems true. The band used the new date to signal that getting the album to sound precisely as they imagined matters more than landing in time for festival season. It is a small but not insignificant gesture at a moment when most artists try to turn every single into a calendar event rather than into music.

Why is „Superpowers” a surprise?

The most interesting part of the story is not the date but the sound. „Superpowers” is a relaxed, synth-driven track, smoothly produced and built around a big pop chorus, far from the raw guitar energy the band is known for. Serge Pizzorno, the man who has carried the group’s creative weight for years, openly said he wanted a song in the spirit of Snoop Dogg’s „Doggystyle”, the early-nineties G-funk classic. This is a turn that does not happen by accident, but as a deliberate choice to open space for something Kasabian had not attempted before.

G-funk is a genre of soft basslines, stretched-out synths and a sunny, almost lazy atmosphere, the aesthetic of Californian asphalt translated into sound. Pairing that with the rock sensibility of a band from the English Midlands sounds like a recipe for a misunderstanding, yet the risk is exactly why the single is worth attention. When an artist with a clear signature deliberately steps outside their comfort zone, the result is either a misfire or a new colour in the palette. „Superpowers” feels like the latter.

Stephen Graham and lyrics as a script

The second layer of surprise arrives through the video. Instead of a standard clip, Pizzorno turned the song’s lyrics into an audition script and gave the lead role to Stephen Graham, one of the most respected British actors working today. The idea of reading lyrics as an audition monologue is not merely a marketing trick but a dramaturgical move that lifts the song out of the concert hall and into theatrical logic, where the words gain an actor’s body and pause.

That blend of music and acting is not new in British culture, but it is rarely staged this directly. Graham, known to audiences for roles in which silence says more than a line, is an ideal choice for a song that leans on atmosphere rather than on a chorus that shouts. With it, Kasabian have shown that „Act III” will not be just a collection of tracks but an attempt to bind sound and image into something more complete.

The open question is how much the rest of the album will hold to this new tone, or whether „Superpowers” is an exception that only hints at the band’s range. By September 4 we will have enough time to replay the single as many times as it takes to decide whether the turn appeals to us. And to you, does a band changing direction after twenty years deserve trust or caution?