The (International) Noise Conspiracy

Following the delightful over-exuberance of The Sound Explosion, five Swedes clad in striking red attire bound onto the makeshift stage in the smaller of the Leadmill’s two rooms.

They are The (International) Noise Conspiracy, and despite the uniforms, they’re certainly not The Hives. Their music has far more purpose, and as singer Dennis Lyxzen is keen to tell us, that purpose is revolution.

Renouncing capitalism and all its evils, he proclaims a desire to change power structures. His message seems to be lost on the majority of tonight’s audience, though; this is an over-14’s gig and the young crowd seem more intent on missing school tomorrow with a snakebite induced hangover than changing the world.

“I’m all for anti-capitalism,” declares one decidedly fresh-faced audience member during a break in the proceedings, “but there’s no need to make such a big deal about it.”

There’s no ambivalence about The INC’s live show, though. Lyxzen jumps around the stage, mounts the speaker stacks and even simulates oral sex on guitarist Lars Stromberg during a particularly frenzied solo.

Showcasing material from new album ‘Armed Love’ with the kind of zeal you wouldn’t normally associate with a Sunday evening, their onstage energy is as rehearsed as it is infectious. But it makes for quite a performance.

Lyxzen’s lengthy and rhetorical introductions for songs like ‘Let’s Make History,’ and ‘The Dream Is Over,’ ensure they’re met with firm approval by the small group of INC fanatics at the front, all potential (and, indeed, literal) children of the revolution.

Although their message is more idealistic than realistic, and the singer encouraging purchase of band merchandise more than a little hypocritical, theirs is good old fashioned punk rock from the days when wearing a leather jacket was anything but passé.

The latest record is their most polished yet, but live they sound as raw and raucous as you’d expect and hope. Even so, it’s hard to shake off the feeling that overdriven power chords driving verse into chorus and back again is somehow incongruous with the more complicated revolutionary teachings of Chomsky and Orwell.

But that’s always been the perennial contradiction for intellectual punk, a fact acknowledged in ‘The Way I Feel About You.’ "As simple as it seems / all these dreams / they're nothing new" howls Lyxzen, before the men in red leave the stage for the last time.

You suspect they won’t be stopping at McDonalds on the way home.