Credit: Carina Jirsch

There’s no getting away from it – the sound at the Scala tonight is atrocious. It sounds like the band are playing at the bottom of some forgotten swamp. Apart from Guy McKnight’s vocals, that compared to the rest of the sludgy noise roaring out the amps, sound clearer than a Cliff Richard's conscience.

So here’s the scene – the final night of The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster’s comeback tour. And despite the kind of sound quality so murky it makes Loch Ness look like a Caribbean lagoon, the five of them are hungry. For the audience’s blood.

It’s been two years since Eighties Matchbox have toured the UK, and this, their last night on the road, has a full house shaking at the seams. It’s just a shame that two of the new tracks from their comeback EP– set opener ‘Horses Can Swim’, and title-track ‘In The Garden’ – as well as bona-fide classic ‘Mister Mental’ - are played out before the soundman pulls his finger out and has the Brighton quintet back to the chainsaw ferocity that an Eighties Matchbox live show should be.

As the evil skiffle of Kemptown Animal kicks in, the sound begins to move from a cacophonous dirge, to that grinning malicious madness that has kept the fans’ favour, out there in the darkness these last 24 months. As the sound quality improves, so does the intensity that the band seems to be attacking the venue with their hypnotic psychosis rock.

Looking every part the rock star Noel Fielding likes to think himself as post-Mighty Boosh, McKnight is the ringmaster of this unholy circus. During the monstrous pairing of ‘Chicken’ and ‘Psychosis Safari’, he climbs up onto the left amp stack, staring down at the raised arms of the crowd like one of the survivors staring at the zombie horde from the roof of the mall in Dawn Of the Dead.

As the crowd erupts for the crescendo of ‘Celebrate Your Mother’, all the reasons why Music Towers fell in love with Eighties Matchbox are there, out amongst the braying crowd, or up on stage like a pack of rock’n’roll wolves. This is a band that is clinging to the cliff edge facing the abyss and throws back the sounds they find there. Oh, it’s so good to have them back.