Music review: Twin Atlantic Liquid room, Edinburgh

BLESS Sam McTrusty and his band’s newfound position as Scotland’s most likely to “do a Biffy” group of 2014 – that is, explode from mid-level venues and rock clubs to arenas and high-level festival slots.

Glasgows Twin Atlantic look set to do a Biffy and move to bigger things. Picture: Contributed

Twin Atlantic

Liquid room, Edinburgh

****

He doesn’t seem to have got his head round it yet. “I don’t usually say things that are quite as cheesy, but this is just so ****ing amazing,” he gushed to a sweaty, satisfied audience near the end. “That’s probably over the top, but its just ‘cos I’m feeling the love.”

On the eve of the release of their third album Great Divide, this show was probably one of the smallest Glasgow’s Twin Atlantic will play for a long time, at least outside of intimate, invitation-only affairs. Both band and audience rose to the occasion, with the group’s bright, punky sound bursting to get out of the room and the fans on the lower dancefloor responding in kind. Announced onstage by Bohemian Rhapsody, they started in ferocious style with I Am An Animal and followed up with Actions That Echo, one of the more epic and unifying of their new tracks.

The hoodie-wearing McTrusty was a cagey and explosive live performer, somewhat at odds with the warmth of his vocals, and the band were decidedly one-note, thundering through established tracks like Lightspeed and What is Light? Where is Laughter? amidst the new songs, only pausing for reflection with the encore of Crash Land. In this thrillingly anticipatory atmosphere, the best song they performed was their newest single, Heart and Soul, pointing to an immediate future on the rise.
DAVID POLLOCK

Seen on 11.08.14