After something of a quiet summer for gigs, the autumn run of lots of them worth attending is finally beginning to kick in. My attendance at this one, though, was delayed by wanting to catch the end of the football first, so I arrived only just before the end of the Deviant UK set. I’ve seen them at least twice in the past year, maybe more, though, so it’s not as if I’ll have missed anything too different, I suspect.

Reaper were not as bad as the last two times that I’ve seen them, but still didn’t really hold my interest at all. Three songs of generic “harsh” EBM, and after that my attention drifted elsewhere. I’m afraid that the set was so unremarkable that I can’t remember anything of note.

Rotersand, on the other hand, demanded all of my attention for the hour-plus that they were onstage. A band nowadays seemingly over the shock of being the headline band, instead comfortable with their status and confident enough even to gently chide the crowd for their standoff-ish reaction the last time they played on this very stage (almost exactly four years ago, oddly enough). And, indeed, confident enough to open with one of their oldest songs (Almost Violent) which did a spectacular job of getting the crowd going.

Listing every single peak of the set would take me all day, but particular mentions for the new re-working of I Cry, giving it a much meatier sound and making it even better than before, the sleek dancefloor thrills and euphoric peaks of Dare To Live, the depth of emotion in Lost (why was 1023 not embraced as much as it’s predecessors? It’s a “grower”, thats why – in this age of instant gratification too few people have the patience, perhaps), and also the piano-based elegance of I Am With You…

Of course, after what appeared to be an unusually “front-loaded” set, every additional song played just served to remind how many staggeringly great songs this band have, and the seemingly eternally popular Exterminate Annihilate Destroy was heralded by the arrival of an inflatable (four-foot-high!) Dalek in the crowd, much to the amusement of the band, before the crowd went completely batshit for the song itself.

The encore provided my first hearing of one of the new tracks from the I Cry EP – Mission, featuring Jay from Deviant UK. It’s a thumping track, too, that Jay’s vocals suit well. The night was closed with a brutal version of Lifelight that raised the roof – and too right, too. Last night we were witnessing a band at the peak of their powers, and when they return to the UK, it won’t be a moment too soon.