Five Knuckle came to rampage Plymouth once again, so all the sensible mothers locked up their children! And rightly so. I’ve got two words to describe this band – powerful and painful.

Spiltmilk were their first support band. Sadly, they dropped a few stitches from the seamless set I usually expect from them, but the fact that they did a (fantastic) cover of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme tune more than made up for it.

Exeter-based band Word Escapes were up next. They weren’t quite metal, they weren’t quite emo; however, they were quite good. Very good, in fact. They had a fantastic onstage presence, and the singer’s voice was striking. Every song was catchy and different, and although they didn’t get the crowd dancing, you could tell they were still impressed.

Loggerhead followed. I haven’t seen Loggerhead for ages, and haven’t heard their new CD, so I didn’t know whether to expect the same kind of set that they used to have or something different. Happily, it was something new. I suppose, if I’m playing around with genres, I could call it heavy punk-core; a great blend of cool punk lyrics and a heavy guitars – and yet again, Wherly absolutely blew me away with his drumming. Despite a few technical errors, it was a good show.

At last, Five Knuckle took their places on stage. Instantly, all eyes were on the vocalist, and no one was paying attention to anything else. Well, it would have been kind of hard to, since he was noisy, rude, strangely charismatic and, above all, entertaining. The first song blasted – that’s the only word for it – through the tavern. They could almost be described as a very punked up Rage Against The Machine, with an almost rap feel to parts of the songs, and extremely fast paced riffs and drum beats. And what they lack in all things polite, they more than make up for in energy. This lot are the most energetic group of people I have ever seen in my entire life, bar the people in the crowd, who seemed to think that the only way to encourage 5K was by beating each other up affectionately in the pit. And it seemed to work. Dragging his mike in with him, the vocalist stoked up the crowd by throwing himself around with them, and occasionally, just for fun, jumping onto windowsills and such and flinging himself off again. Nice and safe.

Five Knuckle are amazing – a fantastic combination of all things great. Just…don’t invite them round for dinner if you want a house left at the end of the night.

Written by Luce