Helmet @ The Cathouse, Glasgow, 29 October

Since an eleventh hour power cut delayed our chances of seeing Helmet’s '92 breakthrough Meantime brought to life in all its aggressive glory the last time they blew through town, Page Hamilton’s men and The Cathouse have a bit of making up to do here. Better than a dozen roses, they proffer a one-off live demonstration of two game-changing epics for the price of one as Betty, the album that blew their genre-blurring potential wide open to the MTV generation, reaches its 20th anniversary. Like a jackhammer missing a safety switch, there’ll be no slow ballad filler to allow your piss break here tonight.

Venue packed to the gunnels, the industrial post-punk jazz-metal fusionists (because nobody ever knew what the hell to call this) blow the dust off Wilma’s Rainbow with ease, putting minds to rest straight away that this post-Bogdan/Stanier incarnation of the group can't afford to recline into some half-arsed exercise in retromania.

With the element of surprise largely left out of the equation until the encore – other than the news that we’ll be hearing Meantime in reverse sequence – fans engrossed in the ritual (and a slowly widening circle pit) pre-emptively cheer on tracks like Biscuits for Smut and immortal rock club staple Milquetoast before a note has even been struck. Betty’s rarely aired anomalies are also given a spotlight here; the dark humour in Beautiful Love, The Silver Hawaiian and Sam Hell each intermittently recall a period when the country-flecked insanity of old contemporaries like Primus and The Butthole Surfers ran riot through the pages of Melody Maker. 

“Now we’re gonna play this other shitty old album…’ Meantime still arrives like a suckerpunch – Turned Out's stuttering groove is a monstrous highlight, Hamilton roaring himself hoarse to its perpetually climaxing chorus. Unsung, as ever, is greeted like an old friend waiting at the bar, holding out a pint of snakebite. 

One last encore dips into opposite ends of the vault; Rude – a snotty-nosed old rattler from 1990 debut Strap it On – alongside Birth Defect and Driving Nowhere from 2005's Size Matters, show a stark contrast between the band’s early fury and the aptitude for an unconventional pop nous that Hamilton explored later on. They sign off with Just Another Victim – the gnarled House of Pain collaboration which pointed the band towards the sort of rap-rock potential that nu-metal plagiarists carried on to its deafening conclusion. Yet Helmet remain a tall plateau for forward-thinking hard rock, and this evening proves a visceral reminder that nobody marries melody to mayhem quite like these boys.