大象传媒

Another Friday night, another Animal Disco - and that does seem a pretty fitting moniker for our evening's entertainment, in all the best possible ways.

It's like a 'Who's Who' of the Northern Irish rock scene at Auntie Annies, with members of And So I Watch You From Afar, LaFaro, Fighting With Wire, Mojo Fury, and (the sadly now defunct) Panama Kings all in attendance and ripping it up to The Rupture Dogs. And they certainly weren't alone.

It's not that hard to see what all the fuss is about. It could be easy to dismiss The Rupture Dogs with the most cursory and superficial of glances as mere noisemongers, but it doesn't take too long to see that they have a lot more than that going for them. At first they might seem like a more rambunctious, slightly less infectious, grungier Fighting With Wire, but that's only one of their many facets.

These Dogs can certainly bring the noise, but there's quite a bit of compelling depth behind it all. There's little hints of lots of influences, from the likes of At The Drive In and System Of A Down, but all in quite fascinating and almost unexpected ways. They're at their most interesting and show the most promise when they turn it down just a teensy, teeny tiny little bit to give everything a little more room to breathe.

Whilst they're pretty cracking at doing the whole heavy, dirty, scuzzy rock thing - and there's certainly absolutely nothing wrong with that at all - they're at their most interesting and show the most promise when they turn it down just a teensy, teeny tiny little bit to give everything a little more room to breathe. Take 'Bitter Fight', for instance - with a riff that would put you in mind of a less poppy and commercial Strokes, and with one of Allan McGreevy's better vocals, it shows the potential and breadth of their sound.

The Rupture Dogs have been banging away quite nicely for a while now, and almost all of a sudden they seem to be making waves. They've definitely got the chops to make a bigger dent on the scene: bags of energy, some really captivating and intriguing sounds and a really impressive and assured live performance to back it all up. Keep an eye out for these 'uns - things are about to get interesting.

Orla Graham