Last time Lapsus Linguae visited Oxford it was to support the release of their single ‘Parade!’ (and that’s an order) on Fierce Panda offshoot Livid Meerkat. On record their epic post-rock-meets-Wagner pop classicism sounds enthralling enough, swelling with strings and thundering bass. Live, Lapsus are an entirely different entity. No longer in the relatively peaceful company of your CD player, you are now faced with a bunch of punk goths entrenched in leather trousers and Iron Maiden-style cut-off Lapsus Linguae t-shirts. Their new mini-album, ‘You Got Me Fraiche’ is a step on from ‘Parade!’ in that it’s more aggressive and unpredictable than their single might have lead anyone to suspect.

This is even more evident live where ‘Are We Really Dancing?’ and ‘Sheer Animal Magic’ deconstruct the classical piano and bury it under a raging mass of screaming vocals, thundering drums and a squall of guitar noise. It’s such a shambles at times even the band end up asking “what the fuck’s that noise?”

Main songwriters Penelope Collegefriend and Magaloof Taylor (possibly not their real names) spend most of the set spitting on each other before coming to blows midway through ‘Are We Really Dancing?’ Staged fight or not, the pair of them have an unnerving stage presence.When this sense of menace bubbling away under the surface is added to the frantic wall of noise coming from the stage you begin to realize that you are watching what may well be the most exciting band of the year. And it’s only January. Put it this way, when it turns out that the scuffle on stage has written off Magaloof’s bass amp he simply stands on stage and smokes his way through the rest of the set. For some reason with the way Lapsus look and sound, it seemed like the obvious thing for him to do.

Allin Pratt