Behold! Before ‘ee tonight stand four bands eager to break rank and charge their own way, over trench and quite probably to the nearest ale house. Although each brandishes the established weapons of war – guitars and those sticks that make such a racket when striking down upon a skin taut – not one of these miniature platoons is the kind to follow the crowd. They’re Mick Fleetwood at the Brits, going his own way, confused and alone amongst millions; Mickey Mouse, in his house, pulling down his trousers and hoping Pluto’s not burned the battery out on the webcam again, cyber-sexing up bitches watching over the shoulders of Rude Dog’s Dweebs. They are the rolling rocks of rock and roll, gathering no moss as they plough onwards, up hill and down dale, always on a quest to educate through intelligence, not standard-issue bluster and bombast. Still, you’d best duck and cover all the same.

First to spark their sticks of big audio dynamite are Days Ago, a quartet so obviously enamoured with yesterday and today’s Botch-propelled purveyors of awkward-to-define-core but capable of a noise that convulses every bit as wildly as their frontman. It is he that shines the brightest of the four, burning our eyes like laser surgery, choosing not to take the stage at any point. Instead, he rocks on heels spread wide, flexing sinew and sweating poison ‘til the house lights rise like the warming sun after an entire night of supernatural warfare: us against the hordes of undead them. The band’s drummer, too, is a point upon which many attentions are focused – he sets the bar particularly high. His comrades-in-arms will have to stretch, and some, to match his precision ferocity.

Meet Me In St Louis carry with them an extra man: their legs number ten, and like some mythical beast they writhe as one, instruments sewn seamlessly to flesh, while their singer – like the one before him – chooses to prowl the floor over remaining comparatively inert on a stage short on flailing space. When he, said singer, does make a break for higher ground, his wild motions cause him to collide with both troupe personnel and hot-about-the-edges equipment: he places one hand on the bass drum, one against the sky, and shakes the rest of himself as if an earthquake had localised itself in the soles of his shoes. His band lacks their predecessors’ brutality and up-front nature of assault, but complex battle plans are put into practice with no shortage of success. We – the attendees now numbering many more than previously expected – are swept away by waves of convulsions, of twitching fingers on red-hot frets and drum patterns designed with the sole purpose of disorientation. We’re dizzy by two songs in; come five, we’re in a state of absolute hypnotism, malleable and likely to do whatever our preachers command. Mercifully they let us be – it’s hot, and liquid refreshment is necessary.

Sadly for this gig-goer, a lingering illness residing in lungs shallow and sore forces him homeward before Secondsmile can provide the show’s icing atop a proverbial cake already rich and nutritious. Itch, though, make for a fine finale, their leader goading would-be enemies by wearing a helmet decorated with a target. Opposition marksmen would have to be fine indeed to strike lucky, as Itch are a band as decidedly jittery as their name may imply: this is something like post-rock, albeit forged in fires of purest punk, where blood burns violently and brains crackle with bio-electrical pulses of better-than-you intentions. This is a rock music that knows no time – like battles across the ages, it exists within a day, or some, but could so easily relocate to another. The ‘how’ is because it only exists to serve a purpose: where a battle concluded leaves a victor to plunder the overwhelmed’s spoils, so Itch’s set leaves those at ground zero – the front row – blistered and beaten, in the most unlikely circumstances. These men, you see, are not soldiers: upon closer inspection they resemble the sort of men who'd loan you a library book. Yet they adhere to an age-old adage: it’s always the quiet ones.

Legs tight like stretched rubber bands, one side splitting so dangerously, I head into the relative safety of a Tube station; all about, the sounds of battle continue to ring. I unfold the night’s objectives: to come, to see, to hear, to survive. Mission accomplished, then, but what future operatives will fall at the feet of any of these forward-thinking, fiery and unpredictable acts, each with at least one eye on a relative domination? Remember: duck, and cover.

Photo of Itch by Claire Llewellyn