At The Drive-In @ Manchester Academy, 13 Mar

For even the most discerning rock fans, the only thing maybe stopping the eyes widening and the heart racing at the thought of tonight's line-up is both bands' strange tension with their own pasts. Before their breakup, Death From Above stood apart from a world of bands of the mid-2000s, marrying spiky indie rock with crude electro by stripping back to the minimum of elements, playing heavier than anyone else and with their slightly knowing carnal energy. On tonight’s Deep Purple-tinged opener Nomad from 2017’s Outrage! Is Now, they demonstrate pretty well that they still do a good trade in gigantic fuzz bass lines and libidinous grooves.

With bass/synth-player Jesse F. Keeler’s note-bending leading riff on the sultry Caught Up, they seem to have struck the point where Melvins meet Prince, but it’s the driving Going Steady from the band’s 2004 debut You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine that exhibits their greatest strengths and gets by far the biggest reaction from the audience. So galling then, that this is the sole selection from their most beloved record, favouring instead the likes of the ravey Freeze Me and Trainwreck 1979, both ironically hampered by sample pad-related technical issues.

If DFA are intent on putting the past behind them, then it’s Outrage!’s moody title track that may point a way forward. Singing drummer Sebastien Grainger steps out from behind the kit to deliver the woozy sense of doubt – “I’m out of rage…maybe I’m wrong, suddenly I don’t belong” – and showing some growth that may potentially be needed should they wish for a fanship to grow with them.

From the opening maracas and subsequent swirling noise of Arcarsenal, At The Drive-In exercise better judgment in writing their setlist. They draw mostly from 2000’s Relationship of Command, carefully intercut with some of the stronger material from last year’s in•ter a•li•a – Governed By Contagions notably holding its own.

Between the incandescent blast of Sleepwalk Capsules and Mannequin Republic, featuring Tony Hajjar’s dazzling drum outro, the band’s discography is mined for often overlooked mellower songs. The mournful 198d and Napoleon Solo (from Vaya and In / Casino / Out respectively) alter the pace between crowd favourites One Armed Scissor and Invalid Letter Dept, for which Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s oblique and abstract though powerful invocation of the real-life horror of the overlooked rape and murder of maquiladora workers of Juárez, Mexico, makes for an unlikely mass sing-along in a venue of this size, before breaking into the cathartic half-time coda.

Having gained legendary status for explosive performances operating on the edge of chaos, the material from ATD-I’s original incarnation holds up incredibly well to a more measured delivery, vividly rendering the depth and detail of each spidery guitar line, and the beguiling rhythmic complexity of each song. Cutting a more reserved and enigmatic figure than his younger self, guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López is free to go off-script in the cinematic, extended middle sections of Enfilade and Quarantined.

Having developed a musical identity of vast improvisational and experimental scope outside ATD-I, Rodríguez-López may seem a little confined in his current context, but in returning for encore Pattern Against User, punk has never sounded so arresting, so highly-coloured or so rich.