Why are Spank Rock shows always so insane? Last year they played the Basement on a Sunday night but everyone was on it like it was three Saturday nights rolled into one. Maybe it’s the group’s ass-tapping anthems or video footage of naked women doing star jumps; but last week at the Metro the manic, nympho-electro energy wasn’t any different. A girl beside me grabbed the guy in front of her by the shoulders and started dry humping him, while a runaway train of four writhing, groping girls on the other side made me feel like I’d acquired a temporary visa to ‘Lesbiland’. It was madness I tell you!

The news that MC Spank Rock wouldn’t be fronting Spank Rock – due either to illness or a mishap with customs depending on which tale you’re told – didn’t seem to phase the punters at all. Of course, those ready to rumble could still rejoice in the mashed-up mayhem of ‘Florida’s finest’ Diplo.

Wearing a t-shirt featuring Sloth from everybody’s favourite 80’s film The Goonies, Diplo (aka Wes Pentz ) tore through a mesmerising mega-mix of tunes and genres like a stealthy burglar ransacking your record collection. In a frenzied set, he hotwired Bloc Party’s Banquet with Hot Chip’s Over and Over, rerouted it over The Clash’s Rock the Casbah and Gaiola Das Popozudas’s Ô Darcy and fused it with remixes of Kayne’s Gold Digger, the Beatles’ Twist and Shout and bizarrely, Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al. Like a surgeon of sound with a scalpel in each hand, Diplo cut and spliced effortlessly, sewing it together with bold, brash stitches.

Not long after, the assault from Spank Rock begins, executed by troops MC Pase Rock, DJ Chris ‘Devlin’ Rockswell and Ronnie Darko but sorely missing the blistering vocal edge of their general. In his absence, the guys launch into what is essentially a glorified DJ set, a necessary plan of attack given the circumstances but one that can never match group’s fierce live reputation.

Like the weather, there are peaks. Mainly, the Pase Rock-led new track Lindsay Lohan’s Revenge that urges the pop tart to “put her panties on, put your pussy away”, and their take on DJ Assault’s Ass N Titties. There are also the troughs: like the ten-minute patches of glitched-up electro/techno beats. On several occasions Pase Rock doesn’t even seem to like it either, back-spinning records his DJs play and taking to the mic instead.

When they close the set with a medley of crowd pleasers, including Justice’s We Are Your Friends, a remix of Kylie’s Can’t Get You Outta My Head and Le Tigre’s Deceptacon, you get the feeling that despite everyone’s party plans, including the guys on stage, Spank Rock just isn’t Spank Rock without err… MC Spank Rock.