He certainly knows how to make an entrance. Dressed head-to-toe in black, he holds his sticks aloft in some sort of pagan cross-like arrangement, hoodie pulled forward over bearded visage. He’s like the negative image of a polar bear, squinting its eyes and covering its nose for a surprise attack, blending into his background seamlessly. At length, he swoops down on his kit in bullet-time, and the sweat begins to pour in earnest.

Daniel is drummer with Australia’s Midnight Juggernauts, the terrifying engine behind the band primed to capitalise on Justice’s critical love-in with certifiable chart action of the seductive variety in 2008. Basically they weld great slabs of the latter’s end-of-level electro chic onto thwacking great indie anthems and make it all sound not as hopelessly in bad taste as you might imagine.

Sweaty and exhilarated in the midst of tonight’s packed-out Hoxton gig, however, it’s all about the beats, and they’re in seemingly inexhaustible supply. Daniel and guitarist Andy’s rhythmic attack is relentless but as a live beast necessarily substitutes bulk for the razor-sharp syncopations of Justice. Combined with Vin’s weak vocals it makes for a prodigiously bottom-heavy assault, the band sustaining a ferocious tempo throughout that cumulatively thumps the audience into submission; death by a thousand blows.

At times they sound lean and metallic like fellow countrymen The Presets, but always dusted with a slightly hokey, retro-futurist shtick that sails perilously close to pastiche. ‘Into The Galaxy’ is the sound of the recent Killers and Lou Reed collaboration being given an anal probe at warp speed, while ‘Shadows’ opens with cool synth washes like that bit at the beginning of ‘Thriller’ drifting up through pixellated ice caves, before segueing into a bassline that’s basically Daft Punk doing ‘Rapper’s Delight’. Elsewhere vocoderised highlight ‘Tombstone’ is like being cryogenically frozen for 200 years and then left to thaw out with the dawning realisation that !!! are having sex with your ears.

All in all, a good night for plucking epics of fire, ice and badly-staged laser shows from night skies dully throbbing with the city's embers. We await the Juggernauts' return from southern climes sometime next year with some impatience.

Picture: www.boxie.org