Leeds Festival presents All Time Low at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds

For the Maryland foursome, it’s almost like a second homecoming. The band are a quasi-regular presence in West Yorkshire, both semi-perennial favourites at Reading and Leeds Festivals and occasional headliners at Slam Dunk Festival. They topped the bill last year at the latter and are back with the former once again this August – this sweaty, up-close-and-personal show, their smallest on British shores for several years, is being touted in conjunction with the R+L promoters.

Still, for a shade over an hour, it’s hard to escape the sense of raw primality that underpins this performance, the thrilling rarity of seeing a group who have long since achieved arena status in this nation taking it back to basics. When the group moved up to that top echelon of the live circuit five years ago, there was a loosey-goosey indulgence to their musicianship underneath the trimmings of T-shirt cannons.

Guitarist Jack Barakat jokes midway through that he has finally learned the band’s discography for the first time ahead of their new record dropping – “I’d be the fifth best guitarist in Bring Me the Horizon now!” he shouts gleefully – but whether it is a jest or not, they have achieved a well-drilled tautness on stage now that stands equal to their compact anthems.

All that adds up to a frequently blistering show in both energy and intensity, more drawn from the latter half of their pop-punk equation. Opener Weightless blasts through with a searing jackhammer sequence of power chords; Heroes makes for a frenetic punch; Damned if I Do Ya (Damned if I Don’t) drills down on a power-pop sugar-rush.

Even the trio of cuts from their upcoming eighth album Wake Up, Sunshine are greeted like modern classics – the unreleased Getaway Green is a particularly lean piece of earworm brilliance. Throughout it all, the band look absolutely ecstatic, as electrified by their audience as vice versa.

“We’ll be back before you know it!” Gaskarth bellows before closer Dear Maria, Count Me In spawns a spate of cramped crowdsurfing in which he clambers into the crowd. Up close and personal doesn’t begin to cover this unexpectedly elated triumph.

All Time Low will be playing Leeds Festival on Saturday August 29.