When you think of Utah and music, the only names that spring to mind are the Osmonds, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Utah Saints, who weren't actually from Utah. Or saints. But now four lapsed Mormons from the suburbs of Salt Lake City are on the brink of big things. Judging from the slogan on frontman Bert McCracken's T-shirt, his beliefs now markedly diverge from Mormon doctrine. It reads: Jesus Says Keep on Pimping.

To non-fans, McCracken is known chiefly for dating Kelly Osbourne at the height of her fame, and screaming so hard on stage that he often throws up - the height of showmanship for the tattoo-and-piercing crowd, who are out in full and fervent force tonight.

McCracken is a born frontman: boyish and baggy-shorted, with the guileless energy of a big kid. He rubs a bouncer's head so playfully that he's met with a goofy grin rather than a threatening growl, and asks audience members to throw their arms around their best friends. "I want you to tell them that you love them," he gushes, but he has overplayed his hand. His charms are no match for English reserve.

The Used have acquired the will-this-do genre name "screamo", signifying a shoutier variety of the handwringing punk-pop known as "emo", but that tag inadequately accommodates both white-knuckle rant Take It Away and Bics-aloft power ballad All That I've Got. And while emo's more earnest practitioners might choose a Cure or Smiths song to cover, the Used give The Power of Love by Huey Lewis & the News a howling, minor-chord savaging. They have an arena-ready sense of theatre, too: at the end of Taste of Ink, they're on either their knees or their backs in front of the drum riser, hamming it up so magnificently that Spinal Tap would applaud.

Finally, when the rest of the band have departed, McCracken walks to the back of the stage, bends over and unleashes a splashy stream -of vomit. What a pro.