...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead @ Oran Mor, 14 Feb

A band famed for their anarchic live shows playing a converted church on Valentine's day: there's some kind of subversive message in there, but I'll be damned if I can find it. Much the same can be said for the lyrics and melodies tonight, buried somewhere under heavy layers of guitars and drums. But then, as Conrad Keely points out after a particularly noisy rendition of Another Morning Stoner, tuning's overrated, and if we were to abandon it completely all the conflict in the world would cease. Maybe.

Whether we agree or not, this evening we're going by Trail of Dead's rules, and tuning's out for the sake of the performance: intense, focused, yet surprisingly civilized. The only casualty is an over-enthusiastically thumped drum. It's all more than a little self-indulgent at times; the posturing often a distraction from a sound not quite balanced, but they're playing to the converted tonight, and they know it. [Eve McCann]