Sunday night, and a chance to skip 'Songs of Praise' and catch up with psycho grunge reprobates Effluence. It's the hometown launch party for their 'Catch Rag' single; scores of us have hastily scraped off the leftovers of the roast into the whippet's bowl to cram into this characterful, if feverishly hot, cellar bar.

From the bonhomie among twinkling lamplight and frothy draught, the trio strap-on, plug in and switch the scene into one of writhing chaos. They bounce off each other, laughing, screaming, riding the Tourette's charge of 'Stilts' like a bucking bronco on the edge of throwing off its passengers. “You and I can't control ourselves!” frontman Sam howls through the swamp acid of 'Donkey Down a Ditch'. The coolest thing about this band is that every tune has it's own weird little riff or change that's a pure nugget of everything I still love about guitar music. The 200mph insanity of 'Little Shepherd' is a little too much for some senior patrons who look on, perplexed and mildly terrified. Perhaps they are in the midst of a hallucination where Eddie Cochran achieves time travel with the aid of a Rat pedal and a battered flight case full of speed. 'Jelly Liver's gruesome, sobering monologue carries even more menace live and adds an extra coat of depth to the preceding breathless punk splatter.

“This one's about a dick.” New track 'Vinegar Stroke' doesn't seem to be alone in that regard, though for all the callow Profanisaurus tomfoolery, it sees the band at their most focused and driving, while the lyrics are laced with a new level of observation and caustic wit. 'Catch Rag' itself sends the place potty, and they wind up by chucking in the instrumental gallop of a newie served so rare it's blue and bleeding. It coughs and splutters a bit, and in hindsight they might have saved it for another day, but this matters not and only serves to show the wealth of ideas bubbling away in their heads, clamouring to boil over and burst out. They squirm and lurch, wriggle, thrash and wrench out strings with their hands as the feedback dissolves.

You can nail down a whole host of Effluence's musical reference points, and a whole host of other bands share these reference points. What sets them apart is their ability use this shared language to articulate a voice that is highly original, rich in jet-black humour and loaded with an attitude that shouts 'Us against the world, fuck tracing a 'rock career' trajectory, fuck everything except this song we're playing...NOW!'; instinctive, intuitive, single-minded. Tonight feels like the genesis of something special, the sperm hitting the ovum in a blinding flash of creation, but just the beginning. Their bunker mentality, combined with a willingness to try anything while remaining true to themselves means they will probably be able to do impossibly barmy, outlandish things in future and pull it off. Blue touchpaper lit.

Images courtesy of Bryan Fieldhouse