Alabama 3's cult status is something of a mystery. Their growling single Woke Up This Morning is the theme of the US gangster drama The Sopranos. The Brixton-based sextet should be famous, but the world has remained impervious to their charms.
Perhaps the witty conceit behind the band's acid house-goes-Nashville sound - that dance music's relentless chug bears unwitting similarities to country and western's hillbilly stomp - has commercial limitations. Sadly, Hank Williams fans are rarely fond of house. The problem is compounded when the band playing such an eclectic hybrid look like gnarled inhabitants of an Irvine Welsh novel.
They may lack glamour, but the Alabama 3 have star quality. They give good copy (singer Rob Spragg, a former heroin addict, claims to have met his fellow members in rehab) and come complete with a raft of good ideas, including ludicrous stage personae (Spragg becomes Larry Love). This show was the last in a four-week residency that highlighted country, gospel and techno with a mix of enthusiasm and irony.
The gospel event starred the gay soul singer David McAlmont, famously exorcised by Pentecostal parents keen to "cure" their son's sexuality. McAlmont was among a cast of guest vocalists, rappers and musicians whose numbers eventually make the tiny stage as crowded as the capacity audience. Inexplicably, a burly, extravagantly tattooed man stands motionless stage left throughout.
It is a sight as strange and unique as Alabama 3's music, a chaotic mass of juddering bass, techno squelches and country-rock solos, topped with Spragg's rumbling croon and co-vocalist Jake Black's hyperactive ranting. Songs come shot through with a shockingly black humour. Hypo Full of Love scabrously parodies Narcotics Anonymous, while during Mao Tse Tung Said, Spragg organises an air-punching audience salute to the murderous cult leader Jim Jones. It is testament to the band's rare skill as showmen that they can cloak such sentiments in an ebullient party atmosphere. But there is also the sense that Alabama 3's failure to trouble the charts may have its roots here: their vision is too harsh for cosy mass consumption.
Or perhaps the reasons are more prosaic. Midway through the show an accordionist staggers onstage wearing a T-shirt that proclaims: "Our record company sucks." The band applaud knowingly. Either way, the wider world's ignorance of the Alabama 3 is the wider world's loss.
· Alabama 3 are at the Liquid Room, Edinburgh (0131-225 2564), tomorrow, then tour.