Is a night with dälek what ‘having a good time’ looks like?

dälek are not one of these bands. Carving out a completely new genre for themselves – not quite hip hop, not quite metal, but something that falls deliciously in between – they’ve also carved out an audience split almost 50/50 between diehard rap fans and hirsute metal heads. Here, lining the vast black of Hackney’s Oslo (1st May), Sepultura tees nod their heads unconvincingly to Onyx tunes, awaiting a performance to celebrate the re-release of dälek's arresting second album …from the filthy tongues of Gods and griots. Kids wearing Palace stand stoic, craft beers in hand, unaccustomed to the smell of the great unwashed. The vibe is tense, and when MC dälek, Mike Swarmbots and DJ Rek clamber to the stage and slam into a screeching rendition of “Spiritual Healing”, visible (if subdued) head-banging from the front row seems to further stiffen the hipsters at the back.

This is how the gig began, and it’s difficult to discern, days later and through a haze of gin and other people’s sweat, how things degenerated for the better. Perhaps the bass helped to loosen our collective muscles. Perhaps it was the aforementioned gin. A certainty is that dälek are a band whose unmitigated love for what they do spills out from their performance in waves.

MC dälek himself cuts an intimidating figure on stage, stocky and stare fixed on the back of the room, slamming the mic stand like a staff to the rhythm of the bass drum. Producer Mike Swarmbots looks by comparison like a fan who’s won the opportunity to perform with his favourite band of all time, smashing buttons with extravagance and applauding turntablist Rek's dexterous cuts like a happy seal. Barely 10 minutes into the set, and the bands enthusiasm has won out .Any visible partitions between those present have dissolved. Someone in a New Era cap punches the air in joyful abandon.

We take a short, sharp swerve through over 10 years’ worth of material. A booming rendition of “Culture for Dollars” rolls in like thunder; MC dälek’s remarkably clean vocal delivery ensuring that the track’s incisive lyrical content doesn’t just get sprayed over the front row. The delicate Rhodes opening of “(Subversive Script)” provides a welcome island in the storm of feedback, though things get no less physical on the floor. Throughout, dälek’s prose - equal parts passion and politics - anchors the noise, at times almost adolescent with angst, and at others broken and world-weary.

Perhaps the only disappointment is that we don’t hear more from the album that brought the band here. I’m sure I wasn't the only one left waiting for the psychedelic sitars of “Forever Close My Eyes” to creep in, or the swooning strings of dystopian diss-track “Classical Homicide”. Instead, a strict 11pm curfew results in a severely reduced set, and far too early, the band take off apologetically to the wings and the house lights come up.

It’s a minor glitch, though. Exhausted but ecstatic, the crowd stamp their feet in vain, for an encore they probably couldn’t handle anyway. This crew of veterans have given a master class in how to move people, in more ways than one.