CHECK OUT THE OH-SO-MOODY PHOTOS FROM SNOWMAN’S SYDNEY STOP-OFF HERE.

In case you were looking for a recipe to exorcise Sydney’s pilgrim mania, Friday night’s line-up of rock‘n’roll deviance was hard to beat.

As a melodic four-piece, Charge Group displayed fine musicianship with good vocals and harmonies that were occasionally drowned out by the music. Both guitarists were a little restrained and could have rocked out a little more, however, acute violin intermissions, nicely controlled crescendos and poignant guitar riffs washed over the interested audience to well-received applause.

Melbourne band Baseball were musically tight, delivering Eastern European gypsy-punk rock to new cathartic heights for a raucous audience who were left wanting more. Vocalist/violinist Cameron Potts was a manic maelstrom of enthusiasm. His scream-fest vocals, reminiscent of Jello Biafra, were at times a bit of a stretch for an entire set but, having said that, probably ricocheted enough to unravel any hyperbolic religious discourse on the other side of town. Baseball also has two very talented musicians in Evelyn Morris (Pikelite) and Monika Fikerle (Love of Diagrams), who fluidly swapped drums and bass and were fierce in both their technique and consistency. Evelyn is not short of strong vocals either while thrashing it out on the drum kit.

Then all sorts of clocks began to tick until deliberate architects of dystopian, post-noir noise-rock act, Snowman, graced the stage. Not since the Visigoths crossed the Danube frontier in 376AD have the crowds gone ape like this. The room swelled to capacity and the Perth rockers, who could easily be mistaken for being raised under the shadow of the Sphinx, sonically and visually put on what could only be described as an astonishing show.

The gristly vocals of Joe McKee and Andy Citawarman’s falsetto combined with a chaotic mish-mash of drenched feedback, scraping strings and powerful tribal beats. Ambient atmospherics, heavy bass, harmonic fade-outs and crushing terror-shrieks revealed that, despite the three-ring circus, a solid structure of rhythm underneath was what kept it skillfully together.

Playing The Horse, the Rat and the Swan in its entirety was breathtaking. Other highlights were Citawarman’s voodoo dancing and McKee’s theatrical engagement with the crowd. He stumbled in, screaming into random faces and obliging everybody to collectively sit down with him for a creepy love-in, then played his guitar militantly, cocked like a firearm at his chest and aimed directly at the stage.

As I wondered where the old songs had vanished, the set was followed by an encore of Wormwood and The Black Tide from their 2006 self-titled release, heightening an already apocalyptic and intoxicated frame of mind. As a group, Snowman stand on the edge and, tonight, led us not into temptation but firmly planted us smack-bang in the middle of it.