Your parents aren’t always right you know. Sometimes it pays to listen to strangers.

Astral Travel’s best song pre-emptively proclaims; “if you don’t like it you don’t have to stay.” A bold statement to make in the midst of a set of largely unremarkable tunes. Whilst the set was not overly impressive, there was just enough to keep people in the room. At times, both guitarists worked together to create an ethereal sound that lived up to their name, and the vocalist had a reasonably impressive set of pipes, that might have been better utilised with melody and enunciation rather than the caterwaul that spoiled many of the songs.

Bands like Cease are the reason “Unclassified” exists as a musical genre. Blisteringly loud, even with earplugs firmly secured, they created a patiently evolving black wall of noise through a maelstrom wash of feedback and delayed guitars, drums underpinning the whole storm with brutal accuracy. 40 minutes. Without pause. If you approached Cease with a mind open to experimentation and noise, it was easy to close your eyes and let the sound envelope and even soothe you. If, on the other hand, you had stumbled into Amplifier expecting a set of Green Day covers or top 40 tunes, odds are it was the worst night of your life. To illustrate; The guitarist wore a fishnet one-piece with sequined hot pants.

Like a cross between a choir of excitable 4 year olds and chipmunks on helium, Bamodi singer Kenta McGrath’s unique vocal technique involves emitting a series of indecipherable high-pitched lyrics. Equally unique is their strange and confronting song craft; Sunny pop songs filtered through furnace blasts of punk noise most likely inspired by any number of obscure Japanese punk bands. With the majority of their songs measurable in seconds, they took brevity in songwriting to the extreme and seemed to fit close to 100 songs in their allocated half hour.

Melbourne band Eddy Current Suppression Ring are so unlike anything else, that it is like trying to describe My Bloody Valentine before My Bloody Valentine existed. As difficult as they are to describe, their music is phenomenally simple. Fiercely Australian without being cringe-inducing, their no-frills garage rock was delivered in a charmingly shambolic pub rock storytelling style. Dealing with the minutiae of daily life, tracks such as Which Way To Go and Insufficient Funds proved it is possible to evoke what it means to be Australian and remain intelligent at the same time. The lyrics were both an indictment (“I switch on, I switch off”: Colour Television) and a celebration (“I took a walk down memory lane, people smiled and people waved, and talked about the road they paved”: Memory Lane) of our unique and unmistakable way of life. Without resorting to broad and meaningless universal statements, they managed to create music to appeal to the everyman, much like another legendary Australian live institution you may have heard of, by the name of AC/DC.

Live delivery is the thing that really elevates Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Captivating and charismatic front-man is perhaps the most overused cliché in rock journalism, but there is none more apt for Brendan Suppression. Pacing the stage like an unrestrained tiger dancing around a downed power line in a storm, he spat his half-spoken lyrics furiously and appeared perilously close to snapping. Yet during Wrapped Up and Precious Rose, he showed that he could equally exercise restraint when required. It was impossible to take your eyes off him, and while the antics were initially a giggle-inducing novelty, this notion was quickly dismissed as you realised that this was no show: he was living the songs and leaving absolutely nothing on the stage. When he ventured into the audience, it was because he wanted to bring things to our level. It was free of pretence or rehearsal and it completely tore down the audience-artist divide. It was real.

A band this sincere and honest will command the kind of fan loyalty that even the best multi-million dollar marketing campaigns can’t buy. Simply put, Eddy Current Suppression Ring are the best live band in this country.