Outside the temperature is falling rapidly with the kind of chill in the air that bites at any exposed flesh. However, inside Birmingham’s O2 venue things are heating up exponentially, an excited buzz filling the room as we await three bands who are signposting a bright (and heavy) future for metal. Case in point being opening act Cold Night For Alligators. I don’t know what I was expecting from a band with such a moniker but it wasn’t the sublime sound that greeted me when opening shot ‘Dance For You’ poured from the speakers. Hard as nails, but also carrying an emotional weight, this Danish crew remind me of a metal version of Polar Bear Club (which, of course, is a good thing) with a vocalist who lives every note he sings, straining each syllable, and he’s backed by an equally visceral band who attack with unified force. With a set list that’s split equally between their two albums, tonight’s set makes the perfect calling card and raises the bar for the rest of the evening. It’s the first time for many catching Cold Night For Alligators live, but I bet it won’t be the last.

If you want to know just how heavy three people can get, you need look no further than London-based “industrial noise pop band” [their description]. On a mission to subvert music and push it to its outer limits, it’s a remit that Tayne look like filling with flying colours. Forming a perfect triangle, they feed off each others energy and create a circuit that crackles with electricity and looks as if it might overload at any moment. With a sound that fills every cubic inch of the venue, Tayne pack a potent punch with each beat connecting like a well aimed blow to the solar plexus. The band’s songs tend to avoid stereotypical song structure and as such the abrupt conclusion that curtails many of Tayne’s tunes takes many by surprise and that makes the brief silence that follows all the more startling. It’s testament to the band’s chemistry that they handle all the time changes with ease and means that when they all lock in tightly the riffs, bass and drums hit with hammer-crushing-skull force. Making the most of this opportunity, Tayne waste not a single second, preferring to deliver their set in a rapid manner that’s in perfect sync with their sound and as such they stomp an indelible mark on our collective memory bank.

Formed in Aarhus, Midtjylland in 2012, MØL play that brand of metal that the Danes do so well. It’s a sound that defies easy categorisation; post-black metal and shoegaze are just two of the genre tags that have been thrown at the band, yet no matter how hard people try to confine them they refuse to be shackled, constantly shapeshifting like some strange reptilian lifeform. The abstract, existentialist themes that permeate the band’s lyrics are carried over into their music, and this gives them a timeless quality, as if they exist outside our reality. Tonight’s incidental music that’s played between bands has a definite 1980’s synthpop vibe, whilst the stage, bathed in neon blues and pinks, has a similar aesthetic. However, when MØL arrive and launch into ‘Hud’, they have a sound that’s hard to place on a musical time frame and could quite easily have come from any point in the past twenty-five years, or the coming twenty-five. With the flow of a black swan, vocalist Kim Song Sternkopf moves with savage grace, throwing all sorts of neat moves, whilst the band, equally versatile, deliver a deliciously dark sound that rises and falls like a stormy ocean. Music and lyrics work in tandem to create a hypnotic affair that ensures every pair of eyes (and ears) are turned towards the stage.

MØL have assembled an envious discography and tonight’s set stops at nearly all points along their career. While the selection is never going to please everyone, with cuts such as ‘Garland’ and ‘Ligament’ in their arsenal, the band really can’t go miss, and they rarely put a foot wrong over a sixty minute performance that hits all the right notes. It feels as if a great deal of effort has been expended on the way the set has been arranged, and rather than just being a bunch of songs thrown haphazardly together, MØL’s gig ebbs and flows like a single song that’s made of several suites. It is with the majestic ‘Burma’ that the evening reaches its finale, and it’s delivered with a spirited rendering that ensures it’ll live long in our consciousness.

MØL Set List:

1. Hud
2. Penumbra
3. Vestige
4. Serf
5. Garland
6. Photophobic
7. Ligament
8. Young
9. CRUSH
10. Jord
11. Burma

Cold Night For Alligators Set List:

1. Dance For You
2. .44 Lifeline
3. Nostalgic
4. Worn Out Mannequin
5. Verism
6. I Am Only Fear