Imperial Vipers, Studio 24, Edinburgh, April 11

The 11th of April confirmed two things. Firstly, this Bedfordshire five-piece can tear up some serious good-time rock n' roll; The Vipers deliver a double body-blow, one to your pounding rock-heart and another straight to your crotch. Second, that too many Edinburgh punters don't give a damn about much, other than the NME-arranged super-tours, to which they come crawling, like maggots to a fresh corpse. Hardly an eyelid fluttered as The Vipers went through a fierce set dominated by songs from their debut LP 'Searching:Falling:Silence', where previous singles Promised Land and Jewels stood out like spurting anthemic cum-shots. The most important fact we learned tonight is that The Vipers MEAN it, these guys were born to be on stage and look like rock-gods. If only one percent of the city's scene-catchers could realise this, then next time we'll be listening to the sound of bones breaking, rather than echoes throughout an empty hall. [Chris Nordeng]