Scouts @ Maguire's Pizza Bar, Liverpool, 22 March

The biggest problem with Liverpool four-piece Scouts’ set tonight is the lack of a sound engineer, and it’s a real shame. Their hugely impressive latest EP, Bloom, fell somewhere in between post-hardcore and borderline grunge: Stay weighs in with a frenzied, impactful guitar line that has shades of Alexisonfire’s Old Crows about it; Hourglass is another colossus, waves of guitar and bouts of percussion intertwining with one another to reach a fever of energy. The EP boasted a clean-cut approach that was hugely refreshing, and tonight the band have no issue with giving everything they have to put on a show for those gathered in the back room of Maguire’s Pizza Bar – however, the correlation between effort and quality gets lost as the levels of vocals and instruments seem to collapse on top of each other.

Scouts are an outfit that would thrive off audience participation and excitement but they have little of either tonight, which, sadly, irrefutably damages the atmosphere. (The lack of movement is visibly unsettling to frontman Paul Barrow and mid-set conversation is more of a murmured two-way chat between vocalist and drummer.) On the other hand, the situation illustrates that this is a band that could flourish in a venue of 200-plus sweaty faced teens soaking up the energy these songs undeniably have the power to deliver. There’s no dispute that Scouts have the riffs, the presence and the quality to captivate an audience – it's just a shame that tonight’s circumstances don't give the band a fair platform to showcase that.