What do Queens of the Stone Age, The Tea Party and Black Flag all have in common? Collective awesomeness aside, they’ve all had members we practically can’t keep out of Australia. Henry Rollins returns every other year to rant breathlessly for three hours to whoever will listen. Jeff Martin began to tour here so much someone must have heckled “just move here already!” as he officially became an Australian citizen this year. And, finally, the bald-and-beardy rock god that is Nick Oliveri has made his return to our shores under the Mondo Generator guise, scarcely three months after he peddled his Death Acoustic wares down the east coast.

For most, this would seem pretty overkill. Even so, it’s not as if Oliveri is prone to putting on a dull or disinteresting performance. With a new line-up of Mondo raring to go, Nick delivered a set of raucous, no-nonsense rock & roll in his new adopted home of Wollongong, where several tracks on the new Mondo Generator record were recorded.

Immolate started things off with a set of sludgy, energetic rock with a metallic edge. Instrumentally, the group were solid – you could tell almost instantly that these were seasoned musicians who knew their way around intricate, unpredictable arrangements that thrived on heaviness and crunching intensity. From this description, one could easily get the impression that the band were easy to enjoy. With that said, there was a significant element of the music that rendered the entire affair as uneven. Bassist and vocalist Nick Irwin has no major problems with the former part of his role in the band, but when it comes to the latter he’s a rabbit in headlights. Sounding like a cross between Ron Hitler Barassi and Steve Irwin, his non-sensical lyrics were gruffly shouted with a limited sense of rhythm and even less of a sense of tone. The kind of music these guys were making wasn't exactly user-friendly to begin with, but surely a little more effort could have gone into this department - it shifted the musical proceedings from agressive abrasion to practically unlistenable. Perhaps it's just an acquired taste, but Immolate proved to be instrumentally solid and vocally hollow. It upset the balance, and didn't kick off the night with the energy it needed.

Thankfully, there was no such problems for beloved Wollongong locals Hytest. The hard-working trio rocked up to the Harp with little more than loud amps, ferocious energy and possibly one of the best Mondegreens in Australian music ("I GOT MAH HANDS ON A CHICKEN!"; real lyrics: "I got my hands on a ticket"). Ahead of the band's European and Scandinavian tour, Hytest powered through a forty-minute set of breakneck rock & roll, partially borrowed from their latest record, the deliciously titled Dishing Out The Good Times. Highlights included the rollicking "Little Song That Could", which saw more fist-pumping than an episode of Jersey Shore; as well as the shambolic, throat-tearing fun of "Roadkill" which saw bassist Luke Armstrong go even crazier than usual, flinging his limbs about his side of the stage and roaring the lyrics as if he'd never use his vocal chords again. Hytest are never ones to put on a performance that is lacking in excitability and hopping-mad ferociousness. Tonight proved no exception. Even that crazy looking dude with the long, ginger goatee was getting into it.

At last it was time for Mondo Generator to prepare. Interestingly, Hytest's Armstrong and guitarist Mick Curley remained on-stage, setting up two electric guitars. At first, it seemed as if they were just helping their friend Nick out with the set-up - that is until it was revealed the two are actually a part of Mondo Generator for this tour. Completed on stage by Extortion drummer Stooks, the quartet gave their audience exactly what they paid to see - straight-up, hell-raising rock that assaulted the ears and barely left a skull unrattled. Oliveri (only half-naked tonight) is a great performer, sweating profusely as he hollered his psychopathic lyrics over his thick, rumbling bass lines and the dual-force guitar attack on either side of him. Several new tracks from the band's forthcoming Time to Destroy record were brought out for the performance to a substantially positive response, but it was when Nick began reaching further back into his musical archive that the crowd really started to enjoy themselves. "We'd like to play a song called Green Machine, if y'don't mind," said Oliveri breathlessly. The eyes in the front row widened almost as quickly as the grins, as if to ask the shiny-headed one "are you fucking shitting me? Do we MIND?" The band tore through the Kyuss classic as if they were the original line-up, with Armstrong in particular very enthusiastic about churning the stoner-rock anthem out to the Wollongong crowd. Other old-school highlights included the QOTSA tracks "Gonna Leave You" and the explosive finale of "You Think I Ain't Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire."

It's simply fantastic to see an artist that has no qualms with playing the songs that they are best known for rather than acting indignant upon one of these songs being requested. Nick might not be at the crazy commercially-successful highs that one might have found him in circa Songs For The Deaf, but he's in a good state of mind in 2010 regardless. The Mondo live experience enforces this tenfold. Quality stuff, mate.