19.10, Carling Stage

Pummelling drums and bass, Satan’s burps passed off as vocals, and a evilly grating and harsh guitar sound that could have your face off – no real surprise, then, that Steve Albini is a big enough fan of psychotic Welsh three-piece MCLUSKY to have twiddled the knobs for their second LP Mclusky Do Dallas (though, then again, Albini has also produced Low – hardly ugly noise merchants). The closest touchstones are probably Albini’s own outfit Shellac, and the early tracks on Nirvana’s Albini-produced studio swansong In Utero. Never let it be said that these boys are po-faced, though – their first album was called My Pain And Sadness Is More Sad And Painful Than Yours, and they perform a single from it, ‘Joy’, which, rather than being a radical Polyphonic Spree style departure from the norm, is just over a minute of incredibly abrasive noise which scours the ears to the point of bleeding. One for the grandparents.