A tale of two cities, Charles Dickens probably wasn’t rattling on about Boston and the city of London, but here we are, in the Boston Music Rooms, slapdash in the middle of London (slapdash due to it being rather more west than we would usually prefer) ready to see Bad Rabbits hit the stage tonight.

With an unassuming black entrance, a singular, mildly affable security guard and a railing of no real importance, our epic journey is to start at the humblest of beginnings.

Quite abruptly, these beginnings are well and truly humbled by the sweaty noises of PENGSHUi, no, we’re not sure how to say it either but it looks damn fun and they certain live up to their onomatopoeic ways. There actually comes a point when we actually think the bass is going to rupture a kidney or at the very least force out an erstwhile fart. Vocalist Illaman is screaming and bouncing and spitting and shaking, volatile croaks bursting from his bulging throat. It’s all a bit bloody exciting, which is probably what you should expect from three chaps that have found themselves involved with Submotion Orchestra, Foreign Beggars and Goldie at some point or another in their careers.

‘Let’s have some fun it’s fucking Friday’: Grove Street Families are up, and no wonder it takes so long to soundcheck, as we have clearly entered in full-on, beatdown, roundhouse, spinkick-your-Gran-in-the-hearing-aid hardcore mode. Even though there’s barely enough room for us to swing our proverbial-but-always-reliably-located-cat on stage, there’s plenty of below-waist acrobatics on offer from one of the guitarists, who even throws in a damn impressive Di Canio avec guitar, ‘so paint me purple and stick me in a tin, because that’s quality’, I said to myself, in the mirror. But not in the toilet, there were just a weird amount of mirrors scattered around, true story. In other news, I’m pretty certain they dedicated a track to ODB, so how d’you like those apples?

From deathcore to death drops(ish), the mood switches, and the previously baffled looks that donned the faces of patrons now beam out wide eyes and wide smiles, Bad Rabbits are back.

They’re back in the UK for the first time since 2014, and to show they’re keeping with the times, the first song descends into a callback chorus of ‘that bitch is dirty’, but it’s so tongue-in-cheek that it’s impossible to get mad at vocalist Fredua Boakye, possibly the friendliestlooking man I have ever seen, and damn that voice is so gosh darn velvety. Not unlike the stunning Di Canio we witnessed earlier, Bad Rabbits smash out some saucy synchronised dance moves (electric slides to be precise), which of course paves the way for ‘Dance Moves’. Bad Rabbits pls. Without warning, a topless, selfie-ing crowd surfer is face-to-face with Boukye, prompting an incredulous cry of ‘What is this, Bestival?’.

Halfway through the show it gets a little bit real, after banterous chants of ‘Fuck you, Sheel’, aimed at the Facetiming-but-housebound drummer of Bad Rabbits, who informs us that he might never play again due to injury… But then there’s more crowd surfers and middle-aged men and women of all shapes and sizes dancing terribly, millennials in the front bouncing and swaying and being jovial, a Bad Rabbits condom is blown up and thumped around the room, now Boukye is in the crowd and amass a herd of clawing hands and bending wrists. ‘Doin It’ has sent the crowd into a frenzy and the party atmosphere is a contagion, infecting all those inhaling whichever sexy scent the boys in Bad Rabbits are cooking up for us.

A metronomical sea of hands waves us out and then we are washed back up on shore to the encore ballad of ‘Stalker’. “Respect the black people, respect the brown people and they will respect you”, Boukye shouts above the lashes of screams, as Bad Rabbits descend into their finale, ‘Can’t Back Down’.

A serious, fighting afterthought to foot a seriously groovy night, Dickensian or otherwise.