It takes guts to cross the river, to journey south into lands foreign to a body so familiar with the insides of North London dives that it practically bleeds Buffalo Bar paint when sliced by misfortune. Guts of steel, and a will of iron: see, Lewisham after dark is no place for the weak of heart, and the cowardly lions that roar so proudly when the situation suits. It’s a dark place, an alien place – a place you’re likely to spy and turn tail from without so much as tasting the air (fried chicken and rotting vegetables, since you asked).

But wait, be fair: not much of the above has much of an anchor in the realms of reality, or of honest-to-God truth (with the exception of lily-livered North Londoners fearing their southerly cousins’ neighbourhoods, that is); what is needed for the wandering stranger to venture south is a band, one that really matters. Every other night’s headliners over at Brixton’s cavernous Academy simply don’t cut it, be ‘it’ the mustard or whatever else you’d like to see parted (can one really cut mustard?); no, no – what’s needed is fresh blood, ready to spill out over territory assumed hostile prior to arrival. Tonight, at the back of a well-attended Lewisham boozer, Let Our Enemies Beware are such a band. They’ve blood aplenty, circulating close to the surface, a pinprick away from being shed; their music is immense, every way capable of having the crowd at the aforementioned shrine to poor lager feel weak at the knees in awe.

Tonight is the band’s first London show; indeed, if what we (I) hear is correct, it’s their first ever show beyond their home turf of Chatham. Many of the fresh-faced rock kids in the crowd are here to cheer on mates – LOEB open a bill of three, the two acts above them borrowing rather too heavily from established acts to the point where cliché doesn’t come close, however accomplished they may be – but even punters with the very lowest expectations for the Medway four-piece are soon convinced to edge forward. Closer and closer they step, beers in hand, to the action happening both on stage and off it: guitarist ‘Unkle B’ (or James to his mum) is forced to stand before the corridor to the toilets, his pedals simply too many to be accommodated by the tiny stage. (Well, it’s not that tiny really – LOEB’s drumkit, though, is fairly large.) A shout comes from behind me: “You’re amazing!” It’s unclear whether the gentleman from whence it comes is friend or just another person sucked in by the mighty sounds now reverberating wildly about the room, but he’s spot on the money opinion wise.

The band’s set is taken entirely from their last (self-released) EP, Dhü Rakina; the highlights are many and varied, the music something like an unholy amalgamation of Mr Bungle, Mogwai and Muse. A guy in a Deftones top – who later emerges as the singer of the second band – goes positively ape shit, his girlfriend tugging at his pants, urging him to sit back down and stop showing her up. His face tells a story no words could ever convey – this is something really special, an act that does matter; a band of brothers in full flight, unafraid of where they’re headed and going the most roundabout way possible to get there. Every subtle intricacy is balanced by the kind of brutality no pub was ever designed for, that no arena could possibly stomach. Here they build a wall of distorted sound that pierces the eardrums like a spear through a Victoria sponge; there they shed the post-rock postures and adopt a violent hardcore stance, second guitarist (LOEB have no need for a bassist) Adam Elwin taking over vocal duties from the flexible larynx of regular screamer Shareef Dahroug (who charms the crowd between songs with ease). When they reach their peaks, the views are sensational; the tingle down the spine – the one that runs from the very base of your skull to the ends of your tiniest toes – is simply exquisite and lingers for no little while. The skin feels electric, the senses dance with delight.

‘I’m Not Laughing, I’m Choking’ is a frenzied post-cum-punk rocker that somehow straddles around eight sub-genres with only two legs, equal parts disharmony and discordance, hypnotic throughout. The band’s trump card tonight though is ‘(Personal) Space Invaders’, a song so massive it could be used to bring expired council estate buildings crashing to terra firma from around five miles away, saving on both fuses and explosives, not to mention the obligatory cartoon-style plunger. Describing LOEB’s songs in simple, comparative terms is no easy feat – the references to other acts above are but convenient hooks on which to hang something that really suits nothing in fashion today, or tomorrow – so I’m left at your mercy, really. Don’t hate me for saying that you really have to see LOEB to understand my cat-caught tongue; really, you do have to.

Leaving Lewisham seems that little bit harder come the band’s set closer, a stirring eight minutes of malice and malevolence delivered when they were meant to play for just four. The river crossing, too, loses its relevance – the north-south divide only exists to dissuade fussy northern fools from ever seeing bands of substance and soul, I’m sure of it.

Still, they’ll be better, ten-fold, as and when they too step across one of the many Thames bridges and into a much, much bigger playing field. Today, Lewisham is conquered; tomorrow, who knows what other boroughs will fall victim to LOEB’s multi-faceted charms? Right now, few other bands at an unsigned level matter so much.