“We’ve been lucky enough to be touring the world for four or five years now, and the highlight of every year is coming to Australia,” Against Me! singer Tom Gabel tells the gathered faithful. The feeling is mutual, with an animated crowd all but filling the Metro early, gifting their touring partners, hardcore bruisers Crime in Stereo, a captive audience.

Crime in Stereo are a proper hardcore band – very Resist Records, very Gorilla Biscuits and good within the parameters of the sub-genre they are devoted to, but without any of the versatility or crossover appeal of tonight’s headliners. Their songs are hard, fast, brutal and, despite some tongue-in-cheek song titles, very earnest. There is no trickery or subtlety about this New York-based four-piece – if you don’t like their songs instantly you probably won’t like them at all. There is, however, a lot of humility about them; the epitome of the anti-rock star hardcore ethos. It was clear they were honoured to be supporting Against Me! – at one point explaining that they never thought their band would take them out of their home state, let alone across the world, playing with punk rock icons.

Said icons are on stage soon enough and straight into a blitzkrieg set where they say very little but just about play themselves into a state of righteous exhaustion. Gabel, a whippet-thin dynamo, has his face scrunched up with vigour and drenched in sweat from the first song. With every member dressed in regulation black T-shirts and black jeans, they’re a picture of purpose and energy. It’s almost exhausting just watching them.

After a spirited run at The Politics of Starving, they launch into the brilliantly caustic White People For Peace, of which the title alone is a piece of punk satire worthy of The Dead Kennedys. It’s a ferocious song, one which both acknowledges the vitality of protest through music and also nods to the fact that a song isn’t going to change the forces of global geopolitics. And it’s hard not to yell along to the chorus: “Protest songs in response to military aggression / Protest songs trying to stop the soldier’s guns”.

Perhaps there’s no need to introduce the songs when the fans know every word of them. They certainly scream along to Thrash Unreal, an affecting story of drug-fuelled self-destruction and one of the highlights of the all-killer, no-filler new album New Wave. The heavy, driving rhythms of Americans Abroad then see them on the guard against complacency: “I hope I’m not like them, I’m not so sure”. The only momentary respite from the non-stop energy is when Tom Gabel breaks a guitar string in Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart, the duet which on record features Tegan Quinn (of Tegan and Sara). Equally poppy is Sink, Flordia, Sink, which shows they can do melodic as well as angry.

Further variety comes in the form of the super-taut New Wave single Stop and the fluid bassline and insistent rhythm of Don’t Lose Touch, which recalls Husker Du. Gabel’s corrosive screech of a voice is in fine form, and is joined by hundreds of others in the encore of old favourite T.S.R This Shit Rules. The crowd, a seething mass of crowd-surfing and fists in the air all night, is spilling onto the stage by the time they reach the title track of New Wave, one fan grabbing Gabel. The near-chaos ends with the typically anthemic Turn Those Clapping Hands Into Angry Balled Fists.

With the acoustic folk-punk of their early releases long behind them (the brilliant Baby, I’m an Anarchist is a sad omission from tonight’s set-list) and the band now signed to the Warner subsidiary Sire, some hardline fans have accused Against Me! of selling out. But they mustn’t have been here tonight, must not have seen the passion and pure commitment that still burns through them.

If you want a band that plays loud and hard every night, that doesn’t care how many people are counted at the door, that would travel one million miles and ask for nothing but a plate of food and a place to rest – well, Against Me! is still that band.