Last Saturday Mogwai played live in Dublin's Temple Bar Music Center. For anyone who hasn’t come across them before Mogwai are a Glasgow band who make some of the loudest, ear splitting guitar music you're ever likely to come across. Their first album "Young Team" achieved critical acclaim when released in 1997 and while subsequent albums haven't quite lived up to the debut they are nonetheless a unique and interesting band with a reputation for putting on exceptionally powerful live shows.

I was certainly looking forward to the gig, last time I saw them play was at Witnness a few years back. On that occasion they played a formidable set so I was eager to see them in the somewhat more intimate setting of the TMBC. On the night they pretty much lived up to their reputation, smothering the TMBC in torrents of drowning guitars, distortion, feedback and noise. You got the feeling that every single molecule in the building was vibrating to the drone pounding form the stage.

But as the band proved on Saturday night, it's not all noise. They’ve got melody, sharp tunes and are masters at building up the tension before exploding into that crescendo of sound so exemplified by the final song of the night, "Mogwai Fear Satan". I always enjoy a gig when a band sends you home with one of their signature tracks reverberating in your brain and with "Mogwai Fear Satan" there is certainly no coming back on stage.

All in all, it was great show if a tad short of being a classic. They had a few technical errors but I don't think it was the band's fault. There was plenty of banter with the crowd as well. At one point a heckler hollered, "You guys are great", to which the lead singer replied "Thanks very much, we practise a lot". It certainly showed on Saturday night and from what we heard of the new album "Mr. Beast", it sounds like they may well have produced their best record since "Young Team".

Rock on.

Published by Padraig.