...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead / Turbowolf @ SWG3, 20 April

For starters tonight, Turbowolf serve up a psychedelic punk rock stew laced with chugging, down-tuned riffs, screechy, discordant soloing and rumbling synth-pulses. Like our headliners, they defy genre classifications, aggressively pounding their influences together beyond recognition. The resulting energy is something akin to Led Zeppelin – if they were a grindcore band. With his flowery shirt and mad facial hair, frontman Chris Georgiadis makes his presence instantly known; his growing hunger for the audience's attention and appreciation is respectable, and his charm rubs off the right way, too – by the end of their set, he's grasping at a wave of raised hands in the front row.

Despite multiple line-up changes and critical ups-and-downs, the passion that ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead display in a live context is nothing short of inspiring. The epic, dramatic intro of Worlds Apart plays as they take to the stage and launch into a blistering performance of It Was There That I Saw You. It seems to set the bar impossibly high for the rest of the set, but each subsequent song follows through, from the straight-up punk of recent cuts Catatonic and Up to Infinity, to the theatrical, apocalyptic Will You Smile Again. Jason Reece loses it during a run-through of Homage, smashing up a perfectly good guitar and launching himself into the crowd, microphone stand and all. Some mid-set jamming slows the momentum, but fan-favourite anthem Caterwaul brings the energy back in a big way. They certainly haven't lost it. [Ross Watson]