Nothing @ Deaf Institute, 14 Sep

Now touring their second album Tired of Tomorrow, Philadelphia four-piece Nothing have something of a chequered past. Given the band’s nihilistic back story – lead vocalist Domenic ‘Nicky’ Palermo spent two years in prison in the early 2000s for attempted murder, the first book he read inside being Sartre’s Nausea – you can understand their appeal to the heavier crowd, with onlookers at the Deaf Institute tonight sporting the merch of bands like Deafheaven and Napalm Death.

Nothing are softer than their hardcore roots suggest though, balancing their doom-laden power chords and Palermo’s resigned vocals to make a comforting 90s wall of sound that would inspire anyone to gaze at their shoes. Set opener Fever Queen and the fuzzed-out Vertigo Flowers show the band doing their best MBV and Teenage Fanclub impressions respectively before they reach a mid-set peak with The Dead Are Dumb’s dreamy downer chorus: ‘Isn’t it such a shame?’

Palermo is an amicable frontman but clearly hasn’t escaped his vices, reeling off an anecdote from the previous night involving an ambulance, poppers and cocaine before casually requesting a free shot from the bar. Nothing find their musical past hard to escape, too, with their older songs prone to bleeding in to each other; Eaten By Worms has curdled hints of Heart Shaped Box and Creep, and Palermo dedicates the swooning ACD (Abcessive Compulsive Disorder) to ‘rotten teeth and rotten people’. ‘We are useless,’ he concludes in Curse of the Sun’s mantra. The call of the void has never been so soothing.