Cyclefly gigs feel like time warps, school discos for the eternally lank of hair. From east Cork's blue-collar agricultural belt, the heavily hyped goth-metal five piece (the re-release last month of debut album Generation Sap was followed by their current high profile support slot with million-selling British grunge luminaries, Bush) may cite rockers such as Bowie or Pixies as influences but, dust off that indie-pop greasepaint and check out those Megadeath tattoos, we're deep in adolescent mosh-pit territory here.
Cyclefly's fist-clenched theatrics and ferocious dreadlocks reek of small-town Ireland and teenage ennui. Lead singer Declan O'Shea's cliche-ridden rock 'n' roll buffoonery - he boasts of smashing up LA hotel rooms - invites derision but his lack of any sense of his preposterousness makes him a compulsive front-man. At a recent Dublin show he mounted a lighting rig, hoisted himself onto a balcony 20 feet above the stage and lasciviously proffered his PVC-wrapped rear to a growling mob of dread-locked Marilyn Manson devotees.
"I do go over the top occasionally but that's a defence mechanism," he says. "I'm usually rigid with terror before a show. An audience expects certain things from a singer. The other guys in the band can stand there and crank out the music, but it's not okay for me to just get up and sing. "I feel I have to put on a show. I really have to work myself up to inhabit the character people see on stage. But once I do embrace that person, he becomes all-consuming. I forget all about my nerves and get completely caught up in the moment. It's like going into a trance."
Cyclefly emerged from the debris of Dogabone, a metal outfit put together by Declan and guitarist brother, Ciaran, while both were still at school. The group became a minor local phenomenon in east Cork as months of intensive touring across Ireland's small-town metal heartland resulted in a large-ish fan-base but they were never going to make the front cover of the hard-rock bible Kerrang! by packing pubs in Carrick-on-Suir. Impatience turned into disillusionment - the brothers quit and took up seasonal employment at Disneyland Paris where they were set to work assembling fairground rides. It was here they hooked up with the pan-European backing band that makes up the remainder of Cyclefly.
Declan and Ciaran's fresh incarnation seemed doomed to the same inauspicious fate as Dogabone but the re-emergence in Europe of a vibrant heavy-metal scene - albeit one more inspired by the gender-boundary flirtations and sado-masochist obsessions of Nine Inch Nails and Placebo than the camp, devil-worshipping pantomime of Iron Maiden - changed everything.
Cyclefly's adroit marrying of monster riffs and pop hooks became, almost overnight, as hip as hell. A deal with Universal Records and a prestige booking at the high-profile Woodstock II festival last year set them up for chart breakthrough in 2000, with a spring single release planned.
The re-release of Generation Sap is tipped to propel the band to the first rank of heavy metal acts. While absolute in its adherence to the conventions of the genre - shouting choruses, lugubrious bass-lines, oodles of self-loathing - the album is rescued from rock sterility by a twinkling evil charm rarely encountered at this end of the rock spectrum. "Thank you, Midleton," says Declan. "We take a lot of inspiration from our upbringing. east Cork is a major influence on my song-writing.
"Some people say a place like Midleton holds you back but we owe an awful lot to our upbringing. We still keep in contact with people there and go home whenever we can. We did a gig in Cork recently and they had to turn 300 people away. That's the biggest compliment anybody could pay us. Even if I end playing in front of thousands of people at some huge festival, I'll still be an east Cork boy."
Generation Sap is released by Universal