Current darlings of the goth-metal vanguard, Little Hell actually seem to hark back to a much older style of rock. Look beyond the shrapnel-spitting Lucie Johnston and ice-cool bassist Bex and you’ll discover Guns’n’Roses scrapping it out with primetime Nirvana on songs like ‘Use It’. Those Banshees comparisons seem misplaced but there’s plenty of evidence tonight that Little Hell are coming from the right place. Down there, if you know what I mean.

They’re a picnic in paradise compared to Queen Adreena, though. This is the band formed by former Daisy Chainsaw types Katie Jane Garside and Crispin Gray and they are the most incredible rock’n’roll freakshow you are likely to witness this side of your own death. Katie Jane is a fidgety, hyperactive, spastic bundle of bones and neuroses, half-dressed in a lace top and knickers and not much else. Crispin drinks wine, fights with Katie Jane and hammers the shit out of his guitar while Cop-Fetish bassist Dizzy Q looms over the proceedings like some monstrous apparition. Behind all this is Steve Drew, hitting his drumkit harder than any man before him, dispensing with frivolities like cymbals and hi-hats to pound out an incessant tribal war beat over which the lunatic cabaret can unfold.

It all starts innocuously enough with ‘Yesterday’s Hymn’, a spooky, half-whispered prayer with Katie Jane coming on like Bjork with a severe whisky hangover. And then come the drums. And the lurching, coruscating, writhing mass of guitar noise. And Katie Jane’s incredible performance as she throws herself into some nightmarish oblivion and probable premature death.

Now she’s Kate Bush born in a sewer and raised by rats, a genuine basket case turning her inner torment inside out for your voyeuristic pleasure. An incredible cover of ‘Jolene’ sounds like it comes direct on the expressway from Hell and as the set progresses, with virtually no respite, through a torrid maelstrom of gothic horror and vicious, grinding tribal metal, Katie Jane looking increasingly likely to do herself some serious harm, you wonder why all bands can’t sound like this.

Having gone through a prolonged nervous breakdown during her time with Daisy Chainsaw, Katie Jane Garside shows no sign of having come to terms with life. You worry for her health, really you do. Which is what makes tonight so staggeringly spectacular. This is for real. An awesome performance. And a lesson for anyone wanting to start their own band. Watch, listen and learn.

Dale Kattack