Walking into Glasgow ABC tonight, we're met with a bit of a shock. By the time US openers The New Regime finish up their short set, the room is still fairly empty; a sight that you'd think impossible for a Taking Back Sunday show.

By the time The Xcerts emerge onstage, the crowd is a few persons deeper and rightly so. Powering through a distortion-laden set, the band are so loud, you'd barely be able to believe there were only the three of them. Filling up the room, their songs possess both a fragile instability and deafening power, ensuring an incendiary performance.

Playing a range of songs from both of their albums - debut 'In The Cold Wind We Smile' and their stunning sophomore effort 'Scatterbrain' - tonight's main highlight comes in the form of the utterly intense closer 'Hurt With Me'. Jumping off the stage and stumbling into the crowd, frontman Murray Macleod is left bellowing the track title into the mic, in an almost possessed fashion. A stark ending to a brilliant set.

Despite our inital reservations at the start of the evening, Glasgow isn't one to let us down and so, by the time the lights dim for tonight's headliners, the room is filled. Crashing into the huge-sounding opener from their latest record - 'El Paso' - Taking Back Sunday set the bar high from the word go.

Spending close to one hundred minutes on stage, the twelve year old band are exceptional; the old songs sound as passionate as when they were first aired and the new songs easily fill the room with soaring sound. Watching John Nolan and Shaun Cooper play alongside their previous bandmates is a pleasure and a priviledge in itself, considering most of tonight's audience were probably convinced that they'd never bear witness to such an event.

Adam Lazzara is another beast entirely; his built, masculine figure still whipping the microphone around his neck without even a hint of caution, he bounds and ducks around the stage and into the audience, just like his slight, younger self from the 'Tell All Your Friends' days. His southern drawl is entirely commanding throughout, whilst still somehow remaining endearing. He even finds it appropriate to throw himself into the crowd for a good half hour of the set, eventually emerging at the back bar of the ABC. It's in the midst of a sea of fans that he delicately voices 'Ghost Man On Third', and it's around that point we're convinced it can't get any better.

Song-wise, there's very little omitted from the band's older offerings (in contrast to the zero tracks chosen from 'New Again'...), enticing the audience's sense of nostalgia. Every song from the band's 2002 debut is received rapturously, but it's within the riotous closers 'Cute Without The 'E'' and encore 'There's No 'I' In Team' that you truly remember why we're all here. Why? Because Taking Back Sunday were, and still are, one of the greatest bands of our current generation, and goddamn it, we've missed them.

By Sarah Jamieson.