Rolo Tomassi @ Gorilla, Manchester, 20 August

Rolo Tomasi return to Manchester as support to The Fall of Troy but a full house is in place early and it's only the relative politeness of the circle pit – picture the Pathetic Sharks trying to start a mosh – that spoils the illusion. Wandering in unaware, you’d mistake them for headliners. They're given half an hour, which is ludicrous and criminal, but they make every second, every stop-start switchback tempo change, count. 

Recently released fourth album Grievances forms the spine of their seven song set; the only concession to the stage-front hardcore is a crunching Ex Luna Scienta. From the moon, knowledge. For a band whose breathless musicality and unbounded invention sees them tossed too readily in with the mathcore humdrum, it's that cerebral side that so often trumps their brute physicality. Grievances is their most compelling collection yet: an explosive battery of words (taut, literate observation) and music (lyrical, melodic passages ever more to the fore.) 

Their onstage ferocity is something to behold. They tear chunks out of opener Chandelier Shiver and relent only for a tender (relatively) Opalescent. Eva Spence keeps her singing mic on its stand and her screaming mic in her hand. She has the stage presence of a nuke. There are loud boos when she announces Stage Knives as their last track but cheers when she confirms they'll be back in their own right in November, and they exit to sustained applause. They’re still a wonder, Rolo Tomassi; still that unlikely, intoxicating, marriage of artistry and bullet-to-the-head brutality. But they've never been this vital. Long may they roar.