Watford is a town starved of live music, at least that’s how it appears tonight. As a sourly odoured working man’s club is converted into the venue for a metal show (in itself this is bizarre) people are showing up early.

At 16:00, 3 hours before doors, there’s a few sauntering about. By 17:00 there’s more than a few bustling to get tickets to ensure entry. 18:00 and there’s a congregation sneaking glances into the venue. By 19:00 there’s a rabid pack of punters desperate to get through the doors. At 19:55 (25 minutes after a delayed door opening) the entire show is sold out. Unhappy faces grace the unfortunate souls that are turned away. Tonight Watford has live music and people are making the most of it.

Credit for this footfall cannot be completely laid at the feet of a music-light town. Tonight’s headliner Exit Ten has a lot to do with the turnout also. The band is riding high on a wave of increasing popularity, wider media attention and the simple fact that the band is very good at what it does. Tonight is the third time DTA has promoted an Exit Ten show in less than three months. These guys can pull a crowd.

Unfortunately in the flurry to get people in quickly and safely I missed openers Fall Against Fate, a very young Herts band, so can’t pass judgement. I will say it was good to see the guys sticking around checking out all of the other bands and taking note. That’s the way forward for any young band and there’s a few out there that would benefit from a similar attitude.

I don’t know whether it’s the setting, the show itself or just my imagination but This Part Is Us seems heavier than usual tonight. Whatever it is it works. In front of a big audience (I’ve only seen the St Albans quintet play to waifs and strays down The Horn) the band puts on an energetic performance that impresses. Tonight the pop-punk fare has an edge to it that passes over to the crowd in a way that will grab a few more fans on MySpace this week.

After Don Broco played a DTA show in Bedford back in November I proclaimed that “this was good stuff indeed”. I was wrong. This is really, really good stuff. Mashing up genres, influences and musical ambition like a Kenwood food processor, the quartet is quite the live prospect. Part funk, part metal, part melodic rock, part just-about-everything-under-the-sun, this beast is so fun to watch that you find yourself with an idiotic-looking mug of a smile. That’s a good thing, trust me.

Following last night’s Luton performance None the Less went home, supped on the Lemsip, gargled salt-water, and dosed up on chicken soup. Well, they must have because tonight the hometown heroes put on a blinder. There’s no flu-induced hangover here. The quintet is a fury of energy bounding about the makeshift ‘stage’. In return the band’s native peers throw everything they have back. The likes of “Micky Bath” (played for the final time tonight) and “Define” are shrieked by the better part of the audience. Guitarist Owen Harvey scarily throws his microphone, complete with stand, into the throng. A crowdsurfer looks dangerously like he’s going to receive a Tombstone piledriver before his equilibrium is restored. Singer Anthony Gianniccini is swallowed by the front rows. It’s manic, fanatical and outrageous. Exactly what you want from your hometown.

I admit I wasn’t bowled over by Exit Ten’s November appearance in Luton. Many were, but I felt it was a little too restrained. Well executed but not massively noteworthy. Tonight is a different affair all together as the Reading five-piece impresses in a display of neatly packaged metal-core that sends chills and thrills through the sold out crowd.

The stage-show is just about as stripped down as you get: two small red light bulbs (remember, this is a working man’s club not the O2 Arena), a solitary strobe and a smoke machine that would probably give any fire-prevention officer a minor coronary. Two songs in and there’s a mist across the room that it thick enough to slice. It’s all simple but perfect. The crowd loves it and the band in turn responds with a meaty performance.

Singer Ryan Redman spends a huge portion of the show clambering a top of a rather rickety table and an only slightly more stable speaker stack. It’s proof that boys will climb over anything (I certainly get the urge to follow his lead). From upon high he belts out a mix of songs from the bands recent album and earlier material (which is boisterously received). Redman’s compadres but on a musical master class, heavy riffs crushing the peeling paint right off the walls. Solid stuff indeed.

It’s the ideal finish to a show that has doubled as impressive in performance and impressive in attendance. Tonight the crowd doesn’t so much as bite the hand that feeds as savages it off at the wrist. Watford, we salute you.