Imagine Hell. Imagine 8,000 people all crammed into a darkened room. Outside the sky is on fire as the masses burn the night down. Inside a funfair at one end of a gigantic ancient hall spins and wheels into the night. At the other end a stage, and a 8 piece band perform what can only be described as a unmelodic noise, a car crash mess of drums, bass, guitars, horns, and samples. Lasers smoke and projections dance upon walls. Half of the shoehorned masses are compacted into a mass of sweaty drunken bodies, fuelled with substances, and looking for something. The other half lie unconscious, or semi-comatose. It's a Dantean vision.

Welcome to 2001. By now we thought we'd be wearing silver suits and holidaying on moon on a regular basis. Anytime around now a black monolith is waiting to be discovered on the planet of dust. In fact - though we can't see them - I'm certain that the sky is filled with massive circular objects waiting to rain oblivion down on the cancer of man that is killing Mother Nature.

And so to usher in the year, who better to celebrate the occasion than Prml Scrm? A band for whom vowels are evil, whose most recent album is a fierce invective against the infrastructure of society, and for whom fun is near enough fascist. It's not really a celebration, more a musical wake for the year 2000.

It also marks the first time that Ian Brown and Mani have returned to the venue since the Stone Roses landmark show in 1989. His set, compiled almost exclusively from his Golden Greats, with a couple of smash hits from the debut album, refuses to bow to nostalgia. The response is at times muted and largely consists of people waiting for something to happen - the doors have only been open for 45 minutes by the time he comes on stage and the hall is barely half-full. His stage presence consists of jogging on the spot. It's as if he became a front man by default.

Nevertheless it's a vibrant set, as his band command the stage, Aziz - who I think resembles nothing more than a virtuso guitarist blessed with talent, but quiet and geekish - plays a flourescent luminous green guitar and pulls out enormous riffs unassumingly from the far side of the stage. It's almost embarassing when he plays a guitar solo with his teeth were it not for the fact that he has obviously an exceptional talent and ability. The video screens also reveal a massive bald spot under his thick dark hair.

Ian meanwhile seems to add only two comments from the stage - "Who's on drugs?", and "Had a good 2000?". The sound of his set is massive, chunky and fluid at the point where man and machine meet. Billie Jean, starting oddly like I Am The Resurrection, revitalises the set and is followed by a disappointingly flat cover version of something - Hendrix's Little Wing perhaps?

Nevertheless it is an excellent start to the evening and as the set enters its final strait, the crowd become lively, and wake up. Getting High and Golden Gaze offer massive riffs from Aziz as the keyboard player proffers a guitar and the venue starts dancing as a mass.

Set: Love Like A Fountain, The Fisherman, Third World, Set My Baby Free, Billie Jean, Anything You Want, So Many Soldiers, Morassi, Getting High, Dolphins Were Monkeys, Golden Gaze, Corpses, My Star / Dear Prudence. 

This continues throughout Liam Howlett's DJ set, which - much like his mix CD - offers entertaining snippets of classics, such as Underworld's Rez, MBM's Radio Babylon and other, more obscure classics, alongside snatches of punk. Shame he can't get on with making a new record. Firestarter is 1996. New Year appears to little real effect, which is good. Can't stand it myself. Instead I find a balcony and watch fireworks kick off over London for some 15 minutes, as they ceremonially set fire to the year 2000 and big bang into the year of Kubrick's Space Odyessy, hover cars, and overpriced taxis.

And as Liams DJ set draws to a close, Prml Scrm come on stage, shake hands with him, in a touching gesture of solidarity, and dance as one on stage as the DJ decks are wheeled off and the Scream get ready to play. Bobby intones a spectral, ambient, tripping take on The Lost Highway, before the screeches and whistles of Swastika Eyes - the song that asks why2k? - kick in. It's an awesome song, pinned to floor as Mani, one of the greater bassists I've seen, puts down a rhythm Jah Wobble would kill for and the rest of the band, lock and groove. Any band that ushers in the new year with an anthem that contains lines like "Military industrial illusion of democracy swastika eyes" gets my vote. They don't celebrate, they rage, burn, anger is an energy.

Shoot Speed Kill Light is compelling. Rigid, and elavated. A trunacted Burning Wheel, paranoid eyes dedicated to Syd Barrett and the LSD-Tripping funfair staff, offers another massive slab of dub heavy noise stuck in a whirlwind of guitars. It's fairly obvious that a few years ago, this band woke up and realised they were wasting their life. After all - on paper at least - the line up doesn't look good. Ex members of The Charlatans, My Bloody Valentine, Jesus and Mary Chain, The Stone Roses... Hmm. It's much better than that, as the fluid, and funky If They Move Kill Em floors the venue.

Kill All Hippies - a fierce refutation of monetarism is next - before the Exterminator title track is wheeled out. Mani's bass is well, loud, is a polite thing to say about it. It's the high point of the night, as mad Bobby reels off a list of commands "No civil disobdience, extermine the underclass, exterminate the telepaths, fractured speech." The bass bubbles like incinerated pizza and lava and the drums hit you right in the gut. Happy New Year to you too.

A run through the boring, tired, generic Rocks is next. Blah blah blah. And then Kowalski - awesome. And then Sick City, some new song that sounds like AC-DC. Accelerator would be good, if Bobby remembered he wasn't in JAMC anymore.

Finally to an encore. It's weird seeing a chemical band firing on full cylinders as Bobby sings out the melody of New Order's In A Lonely Place and melds it intop the spectral, glittering wonder of Higher Than The Sun. All beauty is steamrollered by the frankly crap, ancient Medication before normal service is resumed with the joyous Loaded and the optimistic Moving On Up.

And then the worlds worst DJ appears. It as if he was given one sole mission - clear the floor - and plays an appalling set of Big Ups, Primal Scream posse in the house raps and other generally appalling ideas.

Time for the Taxi into 2001.

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