The greatest band in the universe, Morloch played last night at the Croft Institute in a tag-team battle against pop-interlopers Gossip Pop. It was no battle. Satan’s slaves washed the walls in their blood.

Morloch are even better live than on the DVD I saw. It’s like 65daysofstatic kept all their laptop genius but started channelling Slayer, while doing the vacuuming. It’s the future. There is no other group in the world more likely to annihilate stadium rock within two years than Morlock. five stars for genius, plus two billion for the impromptu invocation of satan.

As for gossip-pop, maybe I’ve missed something while in Taiwan, but is this supposed to be ironic … or something? I don’t get it. Like Barbara Kruger trying to get funky. Or maybe I’ve just had five months when Brad and Jen never once appeared in the news, and the calibre of celebrities was alot more engaging. Is this the best you can do? Sing innuendo-saturated one-liners about Michael Jackson? I’d much prefer it if Sue Dodd unashamedly loved all the celebrity obsession than took the easy line of soft-core criticism. Blah. negative-zero out of five stars

Morloch and Gossip Pop are doing battle for another two nights at the Croft Institute, and on Saturday, a band I forget the name of is playing at The Empress. It’s acapella death-metal, what more could you want?