If you've heard of Alabama 3 at all, it's likely to be via American TV series The Sopranos - the modern day mafia drama for which the band's Woke Up This Morning, a tale of alcohol-fueled, gun-toting meglomania, provides the perfect overture.

Lulled by the apparently Alabaman accents and smitten with its soothing Southern beat, few twigged that the song's existential crisis was actually being played out on Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, South London.

Now known to their congregation as Larry Love and The Reverand D Wayne, founding members Robert Spragg and Jake Black are neither Americans nor preachers. Hailing from Wales and Scotland, they are in fact Brixton-based former heroin addicts who met in rehab and bonded in the wee small hours provided by mid-Nineties rave.

One day Spragg heard Black singing Hank Williams' Lost Highway, laid a techno track on top, and invented what they would later term "sweet pretty country acid house music". They recruited guitarist Rock Freebase, drummer IB Dope and various other dubiously-named musicians, got themselves cowboy hats and sunglasses and, with live shows augmented by Jack Daniels-fuelled revelry and comic banter, attracted a huge South London following long before they secured a record deal.

Their unique fusion of gospel, blues, dance and rap music was, however, impossible for the record companies to ignore. In 1997 Alabama 3 released debut Exile On Coldharbour Lane, an album of chemical country and line-danceable house music which opened with a chorus of "lets go back to church".

Aside from the decidedly moreish quality of their music, the message sung, rapped and preached by Larry Love and The Reverend D Wayne was one of acute contemporariness and needle-sharp wit.

On songs like U Don't Dans 2 Tekno and The Devil Went Down To Ibiza they flagged up the flip side of dance culture's excesses. And on semi-hit Ain't Goin' To Goa they laid into the phenomenon of the gap-year student who seeks spiritual enlightenment in the conjunction of spliffs, psychedelic trousers and a third world beach. "If I want consciousness expansion," proclaimed Reverand D Wayne, "I go to my local tabernacle and I sing".

It may have involved the ten-year hijacking of another culture, but there is genuine heart and soul in everything Alabama 3 do. However many, either mistaking them for a novelty act or finding their politics (Reverend D Wayne was schooled on Marxism) too prominent, have failed to seek out their albums.

An effort to mythologise Britain's charismatic villains (including a cameo by the great train robber Bruce Reynolds), their fourth long-player, Outlaw, is currently doing the rounds on alternative radio. But it is still as a live band that Alabama 3 win their greatest acclaim.

Indeed, previous gigs have featured such unmissable highlights as a naked tattooed man standing stock-still, stage centre, and behind-schedule band members crowd surfing their way to the stage.

As Larry Love says, "We have a party on stage, a big party where we can rant and rave and evangelise. We give you all the craziness, all the voices. It's not boring, that's for certain."

Starts 8pm, tickets cost £10. Call 01273 673311.