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Manchester rap crew Virus Syndicate are on a roll.

Their infectious new single, Sick Wid It, was last weeks Radio 1Xtra Best of British selection. A classy video featuring local chanteuse and future-star Ndege is getting hammered on YouTube. Their much-anticipated third LP, The Swarm, features an international roster of cutting-edge bass music producers and debuts on March 9. Added to that, theyre in the middle of a 15-date European tour.

Formed in 2005, the trio, Goldfinger, JSD and Nika D, are typically described as grime scene veterans. Strictly speaking, though, theyve often been more associated with dubstep due to their work with their sometime fourth member, MRK1, one of the genres originators and the producer of much of their material to date.

Not that they like to be pigeon-holed, explaining that one factor that brought them together was an admiration of ragga drum and bass MCs. Moss Sides Trigga is cited as a particular influence. Back then, the 140 beats-per-minute style that was emerging in the UK, slower than DnB but faster than traditional hip-hop, seemed well-suited to their synchronised lyrical intricacies.

JSD, aka Dave Hindley, originally from Chorlton and now resident in Northern Moor, says: The thing is, we always made darker music, so when we came into it, it was garage, it was happy, it was like champagne-in-the-dance, that kind of thing, and we never made that sound, that style of music. It was always more that the darker side, like Oris Jay and Zed Bias, then evolved into dubstep and people coined it as dubstep, and we never necessarily put ourselves in the grime bracket or in the dubstep bracket but we span all of those things.

Indeed, the new LP, a boisterous, high-octane ride stamped with their trademark swift-flowing, razor-sharp rhymes, spins through a range of styles. With MRK1s blessing, Virus Syndicate assembled a cohort of new collaborators that have mutated their gritty sound in new directions.

Knock It Back, the first single from the LP released back in September, for instance, was made with Russian-Ukrainian trap specialists Teddy Killerz. DJ Muggs, of hip-hop legends Cypress Hill, produced the gothic stomper Sick Em. The rather lovely urban melancholy of The Sky is the result of a team-up with Anglo-French rapper Grems and London tunesmith Son Of Kick.

In contrast to last years single Cold World, a bleak portrayal of Camerons Britain, or their 2012 aggrostep anthem Ayah Bass, the LP is collectively a more upbeat affair. Its a high-energy album, its us feeling good, explains Goldfinger, real name Marvin McKenzie from Whalley Range, and who now lives in Ancoats.

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