‘I don’t like you, and I never will’.  It would almost sound cheesy if it wasn’t for the pure invective with which singer Jon Harris delivers these lines from opening song – and current single – ‘I’m Not Trading’.  One song in and Sunna are brave enough to play their biggest hit to date – and people are going mad.  It’s a rock’n’roll riot, girls aloft on shoulders already, and a brooding malevolent sense that this band will be – if they are not already – big.

And thank god it’s a British rock act worth worshipping.  With the heavy end of alternative floundering in nu-metal’s psuedo-rebellion, clinging to its American framework, this is a band that could only have come from Bristol.  All the trip-hop sensibilities have rubbed off in all the right ways, with DJ Flatline adding the dark electronica that really elevates Sunna from a being a great rock-band to an even better genre-splitting innovation.  Signed to Massive Attack’s Melankolic label, after Harris provided the bass to the also typically dark ‘Mezzanine’ album, the bands that continue to pour out of Bristol must be hated by the local tourist board because they always so damned unhappy.  But there will always be eloquence in melancholy.

And what eloquence.  Metal has never been so passionate, so real and so breath taking.  ‘I’m Not Trading’ and ‘Power Struggle’ provide the obvious highlights, but the whole set is littered with slabs of trip-rock so bastardised, brutalized and savage, the devotion of the goth-rock contingent of Liverpool is firmly established here tonight.

There are few bands that can open for the Smashing Pumpkins or Sona Fariq and still be remixed by U.N.K.L.E. and it is this diversity which will be Sunna’s greatest attribute.  Expect America to love them.  Spread the word and buy the album.  Endtroducing: The first real future of post-millennial rock.

Collen Chandler