****

The atmosphere was somewhat subdued at The Haunt on Wednesday night.

Perhaps it was the midweek slump, perhaps the spectre of the American election result, but the crowd who gathered to see Preoccupations didn’t seem that fired up to be there.

This wasn’t the fault of the Canadian band, formerly known as Viet Cong, who delivered their performance with typical fierce intensity.

Entering wreathed in dry ice, frontman Matt Flegel raised his drink to the crowd, who followed suit. “I don’t know what we’re toasting – the death of America, I guess,” he quipped, before the band launched into Anxiety, the brooding first track from their recent second album.

Preoccupations play a unique brand of dark, industrial post-punk that sounds like nothing else: constant tempo changes, frenetic melodies and a relentless rhythm section ensure that the listener can never get too comfortable. Live, they seemed to delight in assaulting their audience with the power of their music, reproducing tracks at ear-bleeding volumes, threading them together with walls of noise and drones.

Finishing with a pulverizing rendition of 11-minute opus Death, Preoccupations took their leave, having notched up another success in their apparent ongoing mission to replace the inner thoughts of all their fans with primeval white noise.

Kate Bennett