Baby In Vain @ Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh, 4 Oct

The crowd mill around calmly, sip slowly, and natter quietly; the odd giggle wisps through the air, trying to evade detection. Cue disrupters of the peace: Baby In Vain. With the strike of their first chord, the female Danish trio destroy all semblance of the shuffling serenity and shred any hope of escaping with aural functionality in tact. Their viciously fuzzy contributions to grunge, and supreme showcase of stoner rock’s savagely beating heart, fills the room with filthy hostility of the highest order.

Hot on the heels of the release of debut album More Nothing, and with a spattering of tracks from their previous EP and singles in tow, the trio play a well balanced set of old and new cuts. While the latter bring heavy doses of frenzy, by comparison tracks from the former inject some respite, allowing for the crowd to come up for air before plunging Sneaky's back into a womb of distortion.

Singing duties are divvied up between guitarists Lola Hammerich and Andrea Thuesen, allowing for discordant harmonies and varied vocal offerings, ranging from reflective to angst-ridden. Kudos to drummer Benedicte Pierleoni for her restrained thrashing, managing to be both loud and leery with every haymaker. The line-up lacks a bass player, but they don't feel missed – the two-guitar attack allow for solos by the boatload, often in duelling pairs before great flooding crescendos.

Baby In Vain make destruction look calculated and measured with their colossal levels of competence and confidence, a vividly displayed combo by the early-twenty-somethings. The crowd is so intoxicated by the noise rock offerings that they won’t allow the trio to flee without an encore, a request the band displays great humility in receiving. With a winning final card close-to-hand, they unleash their ultimate wave of aggression, leaving the crowd standing aghast in its wake.