Meshuggah @ The Garage, 15 April

Devout fans of tonight's headliners give We Are Knuckle Dragger a hard time for their rawer, relatively less technical sound, but they sure as hell get the testosterone going, which is all they seem to be concerned about anyway. Dipping into their Albini-assisted debut, the abrasive Geordie trio proudly live up to their name by surrendering to their primitive instincts onstage, delivering a performance high on energy and intensity.

 

D.C prog-metallers Animals As Leaders are perhaps more tailored to this crowd's demands for complex excellence. Founder Tosin Abasi's reported history as a student at the Atlanta Institute of Music must be a cover story for a more likely scenario: he's descended from an alien race of expert guitar players. His relentless, complex shredding is grounded by a lighter, jazz-tinged rhythm section. On one hand, it's instrumental wankery at its most extreme, but their mini-marathons are hypnotising and a fine primer for our hosts.

 

 You know it's about to go down when Jens Kidman rolls back his eyes and sticks out his nashers. Meshuggah emerge to the ominous churn of  Obsidian, but the show finds its true groove with a crushingly heavy run-through of new track Demiurge as Kidman growls and the crowd headbangs like malfunctioning robots. The material from 2008's ObZen  has aged well; songs like Combustion and Bleed have become thrilling live staples.

 

Of course, it's the thrashier numbers that please the most: the Swedish quintet bring a typically annihilative performance of New Millennium Cyanide Christ to the table, while the speed-injected encore of Future Breed Machine from 1995's Destroy Erase Improve is a surprising yet wholly welcome inclusion. Meshuggah have been touring some of these songs for almost two decades now, but tonight they sound positively enraged, and by the time they bring the curtain down with Dancers to a Discordant System, minds are fried and bodies are left twitching.