Man/Woman/Chainsaw slash through high expectations at their Halloween headline show

But on Halloween night, we’re all in the 100 Club: the band, myself, Jesus Christ and Shaun of the Dead, a dude with an axe in his head, sexy pirates (nurses are so last year), and, the crème de la crème, that eccentric, reclusive relative of Jackie Kennedy Onassis; Edith Beale from Grey Gardens... aka the old woman wearing tights on her head. There are a few proud parents sprinkled in for good measure, mostly in the front row. After all, the band members are barely out of their teens.

As the music industry has evolved to prioritise more youth-friendly, tech-first promo methods – and their malicious side, manufactured fake-news hype – it’s surprising and refreshing that Man/Woman/Chainsaw have generated their buzz (and this much of it) using the road-worn process of shrieking their socks off night after night, chiselling their unit into one of London’s tightest and most intriguing. For the sextet, that DIY punk ethos – the simple tactic of playing shit loads of gigs – eclipses whatever novel marketing ploy other artists are experimenting with. They write songs with their live show in mind; how they will be recorded and promoted is well and truly on the backburner. Indeed, until recently, fans had nowhere to listen to their music other than in person, and at the time of writing, only six of their tracks live online.

What’s special, then, and a testament to the band’s grassroots graft, is that Jesus and Shaun and Axe Dude and Edith know the words, or some of the words at least. They know that when the six musicians walk onstage to 50 Cent’s “In Da Club,” all hell is about to break loose – the anticipation at boiling point. They know what’s coming when “The Boss” simmers down to a quiet, unsettling violin ostinato after the first verse, and brace for impact before the arrangement ramps back up to ten, the three vocalists – Vera Leppänen (bass), Billy Ward (guitar), Emmie-Mae Avery (piano/synth) – bellowing “I’ll huff your efforts up my nose!” in frantic unison.

As dark and forbidding as the band are sonically, it’s all smiles here. Not least from the band members. “We tried to do an Alice in Wonderland theme,” Leppänen laughs, garbed in cat ears and face-paint whiskers. “Alice in chainsaw,” bunny-eared Avery qualifies, an oversized pocket-watch dangling from her waistcoat. Throughout, violinist Clio Starwood and guitarist Billy Ward spin to face each other and pull silly faces while rocking out, drawing on the other’s energy. And during the opener “Maegan,” an interlude from forthcoming Eazy Peazy EP in which everyone attacks their instruments in the most ear-blisteringly atonal way possible, they can’t help but giggle. Especially during the brief gaps in the clamour where they shout “Maegan!” or “It’s Charlie’s birthday!” before digging back in. We know this is absurd, and their snickering admits it.

The 100 Club’s blood-red walls (“you’ve got red on you”) only add to the music’s sense of disorientation and heat. Indeed, it’s the perfect venue for Man/Woman/Chainsaw, the sort of destination that makes everything seem consequential (if these walls could talk, yadda yadda). Tucked unassumingly in the otherwise boring, past-its-prime stretch of Oxford Street, the Club first hosted live music during World War II and stakes its claim to the world’s oldest independent venue. If that’s contested, it was certainly central to the London punk scene in the 1970s, and in many ways it remains the genre’s 'spiritual home' as its website notes (the Buzzcocks and the Scottish Sex Pistols are both on the gig calendar this month, to be fair).

The group may not play punk music, but they do foreground that energy – something disturbed, inimitable, confrontational, and arguably absent from many of the good-not-great hype magnets charging out of Brixton’s revered Windmill scene. Man/Woman/Chainsaw’s sound doesn’t feel of the time; more ageless, forcing jazz, orchestral, and prog-rock elements to cohabit in a warped, pointy edged clatter that gives you a squirt of Squid one minute, followed by a waily chorus reminiscent of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, then a discordant guitar break out of the Sonic Youth school. Everyone who talks about them does so with genuine excitement, rather than the weary, they’re-everywhere-at-the-moment-so-I-have-to-pay-attention kinda shrug.

Despite the excitement, the sharp-cornered compositions, the whiplash gear shifts, though, an element of patience is required from the audience as the band hold back their best songs for the end of the set. “It’s easy to fall in love,” bassist Leppänen sings through the cacophonous waltz of EP title track “EZPZ,” though with the complaining violin and chromatic harmony, nothing about it sounds easy. That’s where “Grow a Tongue in Time” – and their knack for setlist curation – comes in. It’s the only moment of genuine respite, peaceful and wistful with a stunning lead vocal performance from Leppänen, commanding the room as the true lead vocalist and perfectly teeing up the energy boost that comes from fan-favourite “What Lucy Found There.” When they launch into this, their first single, titled after a chapter from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it feels like they’re just getting started.

And then there’s “Clio.” We need to talk about Clio – that is, how perfect a song “Ode to Clio” is. This final track begins with the gnarliest five seconds of music maybe ever: a flurry of punchy, melodic gunfire that falls away into the ether just as it’s getting going, never to be reprised. As we tiptoe linearly through the song’s different sections, each more stirring than the last, before finally launching into the mosh pit moment, the unifying thread is Clio’s weeping violin motif. So mournful that it makes your bones cold (maybe a few eyes wet), it was apparently the one component that remained as the arrangement underwent countless rewrites. Cinematic and symphonic as they are, it’s apt that Man/Woman/Chainsaw would adopt the leitmotif technique – to give us a theme to latch onto and follow through each chapter of the hero’s journey.

Make no mistake: Clio Starwood is the hero. Sure, many other bands have incorporated violin – Black Country, New Road, for one; a clear touchpoint for the six of them – but no one is stabbing it, contorting it, unleashing these surreal, shapeshifting countermelodies, quite like Clio. Her jerky, arching, diving movements are show-stealing. With a man and a woman beside her on stage, she is undoubtedly the chainsaw, the one hacking and slicing her way through the warring noise and surrealist vocals. You, I and Leatherface know the old saying: a chainsaw is for life, not just for Halloween.

Setlist

Maegan
The Boss
God Damn Lizard Man
Get Up and Dance
Sports Day
Omppu
Adam & Steve
Snake Eyes
Maddog
EZPZ
Grow a Tongue in Time
What Lucy Found There
Ode to Clio