It's easy to feel sorry for Fury Of The Headteachers tonight, because they're playing to an audience of less than fifty in a venue that should hold over four hundred. It's a pity more people don't know (or, maybe, care) about the Hallam Student's Union as a live venue: the sound is awesome, ditto the lighting, and drinks are as cheap as chips.

Competing with Club NME on a Tuesday night might not help their cause, but you'd expect a better turn out than this for one of Sheffield's more popular local bands. Still, we're here and, amazingly, this is our first time sampling the FOTH live experience – and an impressivly visceral one it is too.

¡Forward Russia! are an obvious contemporary touchstone for their jerky post-everything punk, but the twin guitars add a slightly more dangerous, yet oddly seductive, edge. If you class Sonic Youth's more accessible moments on Daydream Nation as pop, FOTH might just be the Sheffield band for you, but for our money there's still work to be done. More tracks like 'Fables', please, and some more lyrics we can understand. Having said that, they're a far more exciting proposition than all the 'Monkeys clones currently clogging the airwaves.

Photo by Gary Wolstenholme