Fontaines DC, The Macbeth, London

Every November, The Great Escape hosts First Fifty, previewing its next edition with a series of London shows, showcasing…well, the first fifty bands to be announced for the next Brighton buzzfest. DIY’s show tonight at The Macbeth in Hoxton showcases three very different sides of the guitar music spectrum.

First up are Brighton bunch Chappaqua Wrestling, who are cut from a similar cloth to DIY faves The Magic Gang, all honeyed harmonies and swirling riffs. They’re then followed by The Howl & The Hum from York, who take a folk rulebook and tear it up before remoulding it in new, leftfield directions.

Their slinky twist on the genre is shot through by vocals that rise and fall unexpectedly with the sharpness of The Antlers’ Peter Silberman, while ‘Don’t Shoot The Storm’ - a song about an incident where Florida police told civilians not to shoot bullets at a hurricane, as they’ll swirl around before hurtling back towards you on the ground - amps up the energy to brilliant, furious levels.

This energy is then taken to the red line by Fontaines DC. Making their firmest step yet with new single ‘Too Real’, the Irish quintet have a relentless momentum behind them right now, and it all comes flooding out at the tiny Hoxton boozer. A day off from their support tour with Shame, tonight’s gig is the smallest they’ve played in a while, and the smallest they’ll do for some time. It makes for a set that shakes the rafters of the building. Opening with the furious but melodic ‘Big’, their mission statement is immediately evident: ‘my childhood was small, but I’m gonna be big,” vocalist Grian Chatten bellows, and you wouldn’t bet against him being totally on the money.

It’s with ‘Too Real’, though, that the band really explode into a new realm. When the track bursts into life, a melee of bodies begin crashing into each other, while guitarist Carlos O’Connell scales a speaker stack and starts playing head tennis with a chandelier - it’s exciting, reckless and blisteringly loud.

Choice cuts from an upcoming debut album, which sound meatier and more anthemic, are slotted in between the likes of the breezy skip of ‘Liberty Belle’ and drawn-out, punchy closer ‘Hurricane Laughter’, and when the band depart without a word after 40 minutes, they leave behind a trail of destruction, and a flag in the ground as a punk band that could go very, very big places.