Mindsurfer are always a treat but coming across them as unexpectedly as tonight is a blast of fresh, fetid air from Satan’s bowels. Bang go the cobwebs, daydreams and all rational thought from your mind in the few seconds it takes Oxford’s heaviest sons to crank out one of their increasingly brief paeans to serial murder. Here is a band who know that the best metal comes not from America but from the continent, although the Slayer and Venom influences are still prominent. Human cannonball singer Steve, meanwhile would make one hell of a children’s party entertainer. Grrrr.

A hard act to follow then but Fifth Amendment aren’t gonna be scared by anything. Singer Alli MacInnes is wrapped up so tightly in her kagoul that she seems to be suffocating and first song tonight, ‘Dark Angel’, is suitably bleak, Alli’s rasping voice hemmed in by a bludgeoning tribal beat and Neale Dunham’s seriously malevolent guitar hiss until you feel yourself being dragged under with no chance of surfacing. Excellent.

It’s not all so fine unfortunately - there are worrying moments when Fifth Amendment threaten to turn into - oh no, say it ain’t so - Skunk Anansie or the heavy metal Garbage, but these are thankfully few and far between and they’re at their best when trying to pull your teeth out using only the power of punk rock, like on the seething ‘Camera Shy’ where they promise to be everything Cay forgot how to be.

Eventually Alli gives up on the kagoul, which tends to make her look like the world’s most psychotic trainspotter, revealing a rather impressive mane of scarlet hair and dives into the moshpit to give everyone a dose of her personal venom - here is a woman not afraid to come literally face to face with her audience. Marilyn Manson might still hold the mass market upper hand in the goth-metal stakes but Fifth Amendment are coming up fast on the inside. We won’t say ‘be afraid’ but you might consider locking the cutlery drawer.

Dale Kattack