What can I say about Steel Panther that hasn’t already been said? A glam metal band formed in the 21st century, they revive the long-dead rock and roll traditions of sex, drugs and long, luscious hair. Well, mostly wigs anyway. Taking their inspiration from Motley Crue, Van Halen, Bon Jovi and others, they play over-the-top hair metal about – well, sex, drugs and… more sex.

I first heard Steel Panther in 2011, having been a fan of 80s hair metal since I was about 15 years old. I had a little MP3 player that I’d take everywhere with me, with Motley Crue’s 1989 album Dr. Feelgood loaded onto it, and from there I sought out as much glam metal as I could. When I discovered Steel Panther, they sounded so authentically ‘80s that it took me right back to those sweet teenage years.

So when I discovered that Steel Panther were touring and were going to be playing in London, I jumped at the chance! Even better, they were not only planning to play their own music, but also a selection of covers from other prominent glam metal bands, which ended up including not only Motley Crue (Shout At The Devil and Kickstart My Heart), but also Bon Jovi (Livin’ On A Prayer) and Def Leppard (Pour Some Sugar On Me). A week or two before this show, I’d also found out that Ozzy Osbourne had postponed his upcoming European tour due to illness, which was the day after Steel Panther. Coincidentally, lead singer Michael Starr does a fantastic impersonation of Ozzy, so despite not seeing the Prince of Darkness himself live, we were treated to a cover of Crazy Train with Michael doddering around the stage dressed as Ozzy, putting his mic on the stand and taking it off again and generally living his best life. It softened the pain somewhat.

The set was crammed with some of Steel Panther’s best tracks, kicking off with Eyes Of A Panther, and ending with Death To All But Metal (in my eyes, one of the finest tracks they’ve written so far), and an encore consisting of 17 Girls In A Row and Gloryhole. There are a few tracks I would have switched out, but that’s more personal preference than a critique on the quality of the set, which had the crowd yelling for more at the end.

Support for the night was in the form of a DJ, Matt Stocks, who got the crowd pumped by playing classic ’80s metal (of course) like Iron Maiden’s The Trooper and Ozzy’s Bark At The Moon, and Greek guitarist Gus G, who plays with his power metal band, the gloriously named Firewind. He’s also in the past played for Arch Enemy and Ozzy, but tonight was playing a selection of his own solo tracks, including Fearless and Force Majeure, with a couple of covers thrown in for good measure – a fantastic metal version of Dire Straits’ Money For Nothing and Thin Lizzy’s Cold Sweat.

In all, it was a fantastic night of loud heavy metal and certainly not the last time I’ll ever see Steel Panther live. Unless one of them dies of a drug overdose before then.

The beginning of this year has been the start of a run of gigs where I’ve seen bands I’ve pretty much never heard before. Heavy Lungs, Milk Teeth, and now Black Midi.

It’s risky going to see a band you’ve never heard before, based solely on the poster – it has the potential to set you up for a disappointing evening. On the other hand, you might discover your new favourite band.

In the end, neither was true.

The evening’s support came from Jerskin Fendrix, an unassuming looking man in a brown trench coat. I knew even less about Fendrix than Black Midi – I had managed to listen to a few BM songs on YouTube beforehand, but I was going in to Jerskin’s set totally fresh.

Jerskin Fendrix’s setup was simple – a laptop and two, possibly three microphones. One was clean, one vocoded and one auto tuned. With a press of the spacebar, out came the music, which was pre-recorded.

When Fendrix performs live, emphasis really is on the ‘performance’ aspect. The music itself moves jarringly from atmospheric to childlike to seemingly hostile to the audience – at one point, Fendrix asks the sound tech to “make sure the next track is really loud”.

It’s not for everyone, and that’s a theme this evening. Once Jerskin screams his last few syllables, leaving everyone to try to make sense of what’s they’ve just seen, there’s a short break and then it’s time for the main event.

There’s about 10 or 15 minutes of Gregorian chanting (yeah, that’s right) before the band take to the stage. From then on, throw all the preconceptions you have about guitar based music out of the windows, because Black Midi will either be a revelation or the worst thing you’ve ever heard.

Black Midi have been described as “the best band in the country” by various publications. I heard them described as “challenging” by a guy standing near me. I would describe them as different, and bravely so. They’re clearly not trying to court mainstream attention, and they truly are making music that they want to listen to. If others want to listen to it too, that’s great! However, that doesn’t seem to be their main motivation.

Black Midi are like the audio equivalent of those word puzzles where you have to change one letter at a time to ultimately make it a different word. Their music relies on stretching an idea to its limits, being mangled, interrupted, and then ultimately snapping back to its initial form. It’s fresh and it’s easy to see why they have such a fanatic following – I’ve never before heard so much buzz about a new band prior to their live appearance as I have about Black Midi.

What makes it even more impressive is that there’s an almost refreshing lack of self-promotion going on, and whenever they do choose to use social media, it’s often nonchalant and ambivalent, as if their success and popularity is second to their creative output, made all the more unusual given the the members of Black Midi are alumni of the Brit School. Yeah, the same Brit School that birthed the careers of Amy Winehouse, Adele and even current Spider-Man Tom Holland.

It’s difficult to distinguish where one song ends and another begins. The band never directly engage the audience, preferring instead to let you experience their music as it feels like it was intended – a long, almost unbroken wave of music, rising and falling from calm melodicism to belligerent noise.

Would I see them again? Undoubtedly. There are very few other bands like them, and whilst I may not have found my new favourite band, it pays to take a chance sometimes.