We're feeling particularly old as the tribes of teen-y rockers file in to the Academy, buzzing with anticipation for the Essex three-piece Inme. The majority of the crowd tonight may not yet have sat their A-Levels but they know what they want: shouty songs with big riffs and obvious lyrics about bedrooms and loneliness. They are not about to be disappointed. Gigwise definitely is.

 

But first, Sweet Suzi belt out a few angry numbers of their own, their front-person pulling off the nice girl/dirty girl thing with consummate ease; her colleagues manfully going through the heavy rock motions. Their eponymous closing song is the highlight of a set otherwise lacking a bit of style. The Morenas are next, like a less piss-taking The Darkness with bigger gonads, rocking hard enough to keep the kids happy. ‘Filthy’ and ‘Leave Me Alone’ show their mix of rock n roll posing backed up by hard-ass bass riffs in their best light, but it’s their punked-up cover of Boomtown Rats’ ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ that gets everyone’s attention. If only Sir Bob had done it like this, maybe Live8 would have actually worked better.

 

Amid a chanting frenzy of barely-broken voices and devil signs, Inme take the stage and proceed through a set of loud /quiet/loud teenage anthems. At best, Inme do energetic, young, rock with riffs and choruses big enough to stop a truck.  The rest of the time they do embarassing adolescent angst bollocks, written, sung and played like clumsy teens. The crowd give their best receptions to ‘Neptune’, ‘Underdose’ and latest single ‘So You Know’, which does at least have a killer riff.  There’s no stopping the moshpit now.  “I’ve got to wish this guy a happy eighteenth birthday” says singer and guitarist Dave McPherson before the lighters come out for the token sensitive one, ‘Chamber’ – more bedroom references here, and in ‘Fire Fly’, if a little more subtle than in ‘Safe In A Room’. If ‘Seven Weeks’ ("Seven weeks go by/So hard to say goodbye") is not about the summer holidays Gigwise will tell its parents what it really thinks of them.  All the way to the encores (with obligatory accoustic version: ‘Ruins’), Inme peddle the same formulaic stuff, a few more cringe-inducing lyrics and cocked-up solos, but no-one here cares - not even when its time for the army of dads waiting outside to ask if all that black make-up is really necessary.