“Life’s about three things: hot sauce, obviously, the female form and fighting.” So sayeth Saint Dudes’ burly frontman. This hillbilly Barry White then launches into a rollicking song about bare-knuckle fisticuffs.

Propelled by Rocket From The Crypt-aping rhythms and, one guesses, intravenous shots of their beloved hot sauce, this three-piece manage to sound simultaneously fearsome and puerile. After odes to fighting and their favourite condiment, it’s time for Saint Dudes to regale us with a little ditty about the ladies. ‘C’mon Baby’ sees our lumbering lothario make fearful entreaties to his or anybody’s woman, his Tom Waits rasp backed by crunching drums and sheet-metal guitar. When rationed, Saint Dudes’ two fingers in-your-face belligerence has its own particular charm; however, prolonged exposure to their cringe worthy cabaret proves a little tiring.

Summoned by the beat of Black Sabbath’s ‘Iron Man’, the rock ‘n’ roll tsunami that is Electric Eel Shock take to the cramped stage of Auntie Annie’s. Cue the faithful salute with the sign of the two-horned beasty, whilst bassist Kazuto Maekawa clenches his fist and drummer Gian beats his head with drumsticks. Sporting a maniacal grin and clad in a Mötley Crüe t-shirt, frontman Akihito Morimoto surveys the room. Is it posturing, is it post-modern irony? No. Electric Eel Shock are deadly serious and lethally entertaining.

They tear into ‘Suicide Rock ‘N’ Roll’, their mix of Ramones-like gutter-punk and AC/DC bombast creating a volatile compound. Over the next hour they maintain their breakneck momentum. “Give me cow’s brains” demands Morimoto on ‘Vegas Night’ and, by their demented escapades, it looks like he and his bandmates have been on the receiving end of some seriously bad bovine. Morimoto rolls his eyes and shrieks like a Pentecostal preacher, only it isn’t Jesus that possesses him, but unholy rock ‘n’ roll. Maekawa meanwhile has clambered aboard the speaker stack and Gian well, aside from a strategically positioned sock to hide his own electric eel, he’s now completely naked.

The capacity crowd are overawed by this musical maelstrom, gleefully joining in the shout and response of “Bastard, No, You Bastard!” before Morimoto introduces a brace of new songs. ‘Big Mistake’ is, he says, “about me”. As if to illustrate the point he performs cunnilingus on his flying V guitar.

Frequently infantile, endlessly entertaining, by the close we are believers one and all. As the song says, ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Can Rescue The World’.

Photograph by Keith Wilson