It’s March in Melbourne and it’s freezing. As wind whipped around the palatial Esplanade Hotel, metalheads clad in battlejackets and hardcore kids wearing hoodies felt relieved that they wouldn’t be boiling to death – in fact, they clutched at their sides for warmth more often than not. We stood in a line that snaked all the way from the Gershwin Room to the opposite end of the venue, with fans of all stripes rubbing shoulders.

“Who’s playing tonight?” one of the bartenders would ask from time to time. “Protest the Hero,” someone dressed in plaid would reply. “They’re awesome,” he'd say, restraining a smirk. Five minutes later, you’d hear the same exchange between a dude wearing a black t-shirt and huge Kerry King-style beard, only with a different answer. “High on Fire, man! They fuckin’ slay!”

Finally filing through into the oddly ornate Gershwin room, metalheads packed the front to wait for Kylesa to emerge. Without ceremony or fanfare, Laura Pleasants and Philip Cope entered with guitars in hand and one thing in mind. “Hi,” Phil said taking place in front of the mic. “We’re Kylesa.” With riffs bearing down like thunder, the band showed us who they were and what they were made of. We could feel it in our shoes and bones. How could you not, with TWO drummers on stage?

Dual drummers is as much as a sonic as it is a visual feast to behold. Yeah, sure – dual guitar harmonies when played by experts are mind bending enough, but to have two percussionists with full drum kits hit as one is just an incredible spectacle. Kylesa blazed through their set providing choice cuts such as "Tired Climb" and the Weezer influenced "Don’t Look Back" that saw Cope’s vocals take flight in tandem with Pleasant's leonine mane, which obscured her face for much of the remainder of the set. As soon as the final note rang out metalheads were in agreement: they wanted more.

With their calls unheeded, a great changeover occurred in an almost regimental fashion. Metalheads clambered for the door and a legal place to smoke (or smoke illegally) while hardcore fans filed through in preparation for Protest the Hero. Not knowing a great deal about them, the vocalist seemed to have some real trouble singing, although the rest of the band’s widdly-fingered attitude seemed to plug up the gaping holes.

Trash Talk must have blasted pure aggression through the speakers – the mosh was one of the most violent and exaggerated pits I’ve ever seen; they didn’t dress like your typical hardcore band, but their music was certainly like machine-gun bursts of angst-ridden hate topped off with tongue-in-cheek backing vocal punches thrown in for good measure.

High on Fire was the band everyone wanted to see. The Gershwin was packed to the gills with fans, the excitement crackling between each other’s shoulders. As Matt Pike took to the right of stage it felt like the mammoth of rock had come home to stampede. Pike, a man with a fervent distaste for shirts of any kind, carried a rock n’ roll bravado that many aspire to learn but learn in vain. A leather-lunged, tattooed slab of prime rock n’ roll swagger, Pike wowed us all through the anthemic "Frost Hammer".

As the sound was a little off for the first few cuts, the real force kicked in around the hypnotic yet crushing "Turk" and crowd favorite "Bastard Samurai". As Pike shredded, the mighty sub-sonic fuzz of Jeff Matz anchored their gargantuan sound from the top of our heads right down to the floor.

“What had we witnessed here?” We thought in bewilderment, as they left the stage in triumph. We weren’t thinking anything. It was something inexpressible. We just wanted to feel what Pike and co. threw out again and again and again.