The name is taken from a dentists' garment that shields the chest from X-rays; the title of their album, Sizewell Tea, borrows the name of a tea-stand round the corner from the Suffolk nuclear reactor. But Led Bib the band don't make on-the-nose references to nuclear politics. Dark comedy is more their line, splattering you against the wall with their broadsides of punk-jazz. A nuclear meltdown, though, wouldn't be a bad metaphor for the way they play.

Formed by Leeds-educated American drummer Mark Holub, Led Bib melds John Zorn at his free-jazziest, European improv (in sparing doses) and some of the dolorous delicacies of Polar Bear's sax harmonising and Acoustic Ladyland's nu-fusion urgency.

The engine of the band is the hard-edged sound of Holub's drumming and the powerful bass-playing of Liran Donin - a baleful, underlying rumble on the electric instrument, and unexpectedly jazzy and agile on the upright. Toby McLaren played electric keys at bold angles to the tonal centres, and saxophonists Chris Williams and Pete Grogan sometimes squalled dementedly at each other.

Led Bib are shrewd about contrast and dynamics, for all their in-your-face methods. A solitary sax line blurted up and down a simple loop while the others dropped out, before they all gallumphed in again and turned it into a storm of sound, but still anchored by the pattern. A tune that seemed to merge Latin swing, a loose north African melody and then a Klezmerish bounce featured dramatically strummed, Jimmy Garrison-like acoustic bass. Nothing stayed put for long, but the effect was the opposite of tiresome. A young audience, Led Bib's constituency, let them know that in a big way.

· At 12 Points Festival, Dublin, on April 25. Box office: (353) 01 670 3885.