So, who rocks the hardest, young or old? Tonight’s Club That Cannot Be Named night brings punk-metal vets Janus Stark (fronted by sometime Prodigy guitarist Giz Butt) up against local teenage noise-mongers Centre Negative. It’s an occasionally scrappy affair but nobody pulls any punches.

Centre Negative look even younger than their tender, late-teenage years. A couple of them are even dressed in school uniform. And as you might expect, they’re here to reproduce all the moves they’ve learned from watching their heroes. They’ve got the poses, that much is certain, and the noise is mostly good and heavy - heavier than their emo-core tag would suggest, falling somewhere between Deftones and The Get-Up Kids at times. Inexperience means they’re not quite the well-drilled stage show we’re used to from America’s finest but you’d hope things improve with time - something they’ve at least got on their side - while the youth club banter with assorted mates doesn’t help their cause either. Musically there’s nothing particularly new to report back, but better that our youth occupy themselves making a ferocious racket like this than moping about behind an acoustic guitar or selling their dignity down the river at a boy band audition.

“We’re gonna play some hardcore!” announces Mr Butt. And so Janus Stark do just that. Initially at least they seemed to have moved on a lot from their early Oi!-ish punk, preferring the staccato dynamics of post-Metallica style metal and opulence of Faith No More: all grinding, considered verses and lurching, hollering choruses. Experience has obviously made them a far more professional unit than Centre Negative but it also seems to have rubbed a bit too much of the roughness from them and this detracts from what they’re so obviously trying to do. But then comes `Every Little Thing’ and they’re back to their old punk-rocking best, infused with the spirit of Mongo and on a mission to crush things. `Gimme What You Got’ takes the battle further into enemy territory and, while it’s all a big, mindless blast, you can, like the two-faced Janus himself, from Greek mythology, look at it both ways, lose your mind and simply get sucked into the melee.

A slender victory for the old hands in the end then, but no easy ride.

Ian Chesterton