Far back in the history of modern music, in the southern States circa 1900, there lived a now-neglected bunch of musicians who traveled from bar to bar playing piano boogies and blues for a few free drinks and place to sleep. Big hearted, big, bastard-chested leviathans, these barrelhouse pianists sat stamping away at the old splintered uprights in brothels and barrelhouses all across the south. Men like Big Maceo and Roosevelt Sykes – itinerant stompers who sat at the stool in the fug of cheap moonshine and murderous intent, and played – played fucking loud. And that was pretty much the tactic – sit down and struggle to establish yourself over the din, play loud, sing loud – hammer down the bass notes, put the beat up front, don't try anything too fancy and never, ever stop.

100 years down the line, and with all the differences of context, race, style and instrumentation, Kevin Martin's work as The Bug reminds me of nothing so much as these old musicians – a music characterised by its attempt to master you, to dominate the air, to make you stop talking stop looking and just listen – because in the face of a sound this big and this stubborn there is simply nothing else you can do. Throwing together the sound and spirits of heavy dub, ragga and drawing a few lessons from hardcore, The Bug's noises lump at you like bloodhammer violence – deep and growling, jackhammer booms that veer at you with a limitless weight and power. And when, as on the first two tracks of this EP, this is combined with the kinetic energy of an MC like Warrior Queen, the effect is utterly compelling. With WQ tumbling out torrent after torrent of strutting, lyrical and downright pornographic arrogance, and The Bug laying down a cruel, drooling beast of a beat, you'd have to be dead, burned, buried and frozen not to start moving.

But all is not perfect here. In fact, Aktion Pak does a fine job of demonstrating both the strengths and limitations of the dancehall genre. For although Warrior Queen's two contributions to the EP are both superb, their power is not maintained throughout the release. Or rather, the power is maintained at exactly the same level – the essential rhythms, dynamics and bass beats continue almost without a flicker throughout the EP's 35 minutes. There are some great cuts here (the rest of the EP is primarily remixes from The Bug's debut album Pressure – with F-Yuhself Version and Red Version both worthy of particular mention) but Aktion Pak begins to suffer from the same problems as those old barrelhouse stompers: shorn of the melodic flow of a decent vocalist, the foot-flat-down, binary rhythms simply are not interesting enough by themselves. or rather, each track probably would be in isolation, but the cumulative effect becomes a little wearing. This reservation aside, Aktion Pak remains a solid release. And, should you not have noticed, the RRP of £3.99 means that this little piece of plastic is also an absolute bargain to (boom boom) boot.