Toxic Nun/ Buffalo/ The Achilles/ Pieces @ The Miller of Mansfield, London

From ambience to rock and roll carnage, from futuristic riffage to post punk darkness, tonight's line up has a full and tasty menu. However! A battle is afoot with the world cup in the pub downstairs - will the beer guzzling masses be persuaded to trade football for noise?

Bravely kicking off the night with some raindrop-pretty synths are Pieces, a two piece who manage to recreate the sensation of surround sound, with a churchfull of chiming guitars make for a pleasantly womb-like sense of comfort. Eno's in the house, but so is David Lynch, Father Christmas and the surrealists of 1920s Paris. Sounds like a party worth attending!

Time to turn up the amps, and The Achilles start things off with the boogaloo rock of 'Roll Over Jack' - which is like Led Zep fed through the red hot kilm of the Jim Jones Revue. With its dirty grooves and monster munch chorus, the song doesn't so much quicken the pulse as drink it down with an olive.

Meanwhile, the singer's like a rock star imagined by Tim Burton: his pale face, jet black hair, Halloweenish long legs and body movements have him coming across like a gothic string puppet, albeit one which snips its own strings and comes alive in the night.

There's as much black sludge distortion and guitar abuse as any reasonable sadist could wish for, but crucially the rhythm section's as tight as a bone, keeping the whole house in order. In short, they're brilliantly fucked up.

Artrocker faves Buffalo follow, and singer Nick's rocking on his feet, surfing the feedback and looking like a man who's contemplating a dive down the rabbit hole. To describe Buffalo is a tricky thing: they're almost a hip hop group, except with the raw riffs of The White Stripes and some dastardly alien noises shooting off the pedals.

Meanwhile drummer Caragh is the flight navigator at the back: calm and collected by expression, she nonetheless thrills with her precision beats and octopus arms, turning Nick's apocalyptic melodies into funky dance tunes. They're two great innovators in one great band.

The reoccurring thought that springs to mind with headliners Toxic Nun is leg wobbliness. Not in the leg-disability sense, but more in an Elvis leg-bend kind of way: from the singer's quivering, classic punk voice to the brutal, almost dustbin lid-smashing drums, the group create a primal sound which seems to descend from the earliest ashes of rock 'n roll, via mid period Clash.

On first sight they're a simple proposition: a very good, very raw and shambolically spirited punk band. But the more they play, the more dimensions open up in their music: the guitarist flame throws surreal effects into the songs, which themselves seem to take on an existential sense of aloneness amidst the spikier sounds.

Toxic Nun are still a fresh band playing their first series of gigs, but there's clearly a mission statement going on here, and a willingness to diversify from the blueprint of a 'post-punk party' into areas which are more subconscious. We watch them with goatee beards a-stroked.