We Are Scientists, Octagon, Sheffield

sold this same venue out eighteen months ago, before their line-up change and further chart success. Now they’re playing as a four-piece.

They play a fantastic set, starting with ‘Brain Thrust Mastery’ opener ‘Ghouls’ and older anthem, ‘Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt’. Yet throughout the set it’s apparent that it’s the songs from the debut album that the crowd really want to hear. ‘Inaction’ is the set highlight, and the crowd go mental. ‘After Hours’, despite being a recent smash hit, prompts little reaction other than raised arms and half-hearted singing along during the chorus.

The main advantage to the new line-up is that frontman Keith Murray is now freed up to enter the clutches of the crowd, tonight taking full advantage of this, singing one number entirely from the barrier.

As usual, one of the truly great things about the We Are Scientists live experience is the banter between Murray and bassist Chris Cain. Chants from the audience of ‘Yorkshire! Yorkshire!’ are met with the duo commenting on the crowd’s hunger and the fact they do not have any pudding of that name to give. They even have a response for an awful sound emitted from the bass - it’s put down to Cain’s soul leaving his body and connecting with the pick-ups.

They close the encore with face-melter ‘The Great Escape’, which sees both Cain and Murray (guitar discarded) standing atop the monitors, silhouetted. However, despite this last blast, the overall feeling is that despite the band’s brilliance, the majority of the crowd just didn’t seem to want to know when it came to the new material.