Ill Nino & Raging Speedhorn - London Astoria

I pity the fool who takes Raging Speedhorn on tour with them. It doesn't take a genius to work out the fact that if you let Corby's finest and nastiest open for you, unless you rock beyond belief, you're going to look a bit damp in comparison. What you get with Raging Speedhorn is just over half an hour of merciless cranial pummelling, which really can't be outclassed by the likes of Ill Nino. Alas, our brave headliners are seemingly unaware of this.

Walk into the room at any given moment during Speedhorn's set, and it's absolutely rammed. There's no playing-to-3-men-and-an-oversized-duck farce that so many support bands go through at some point. Raging Speedhorn have toured like dogs and built themselves a fanbase more solid than titanium - and tonight is the night it pays off. The Astoria is jam-packed. You can't move for sweaty kids. And towering over the proceedings is the sonic assault of Raging Speedhorn - drumming so fast you don't see it coming till it punches a hole through your skull, riffs that crush your puny head into the floor. But what makes Raging Speedhorn special is that it's not impenetrable noise. Granted, it's not Sigur Ros, but neither is this a dumb gimmicky display of extreme decibel levels and nothing more. There's skill and fever at work here. Raging Speedhorn will be stars.

Unenviable is the job left to Ill Nino - proving themselves the rightful headliners. And for a band who peddle standard nu-metal rumblings that lack anything in the way of innovation or guts or anything at all that could even rouse sympathy, let alone respect, it's a Herculean task. What are we even here for? From the first note to the blessed moment they walk offstage, it's one long fucking cliché. "Let me hear you all yell 'fuck'! Let me hear you all yell 'shit'!" Christ. Is a line like that really supposed to distract us from Ill Nino's stinkingly mediocre drivel? Do Ill Nino even realise they've been upstaged, or does the rock-star posturing that cloaks them mask their view of what's happened here tonight? Are we watching brave and desperate defiance in the face of an already sealed defeat, or just the utter, inane stupidity of people who can't comprehend their own irrelevance? Ill Nino will not be here two years down the line. Raging Speedhorn will be global. Count on it.