Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, your body is a shell, and Ben Power’s new album as Blanck Mass, Dumb Flesh, has as its theme that very subject - the fatty casing of flesh - the body. At Oslo in Hackney, Power heads onstage smiling. The man that used to spend his gigs screaming into Fisher Price toys, opens a beer, positions himself in front of his laptop and gets stuck into a set in which it’s fair to say there’s quite a lot going on - samples, drum machines, modular synth and banging techno that provokes the unsettling feeling that something is approaching.

Power begins with Dumb Flesh opener, ‘Loam’ (a clay-based soil - good for growing certain types of plant, although presumably not the subject of the song in this context) then without a break heads into lead single ‘Dead Format’ (which speaks for itself). He begins to nod, the speakers start to shake, and the crowd begins to nod with him. After the grandiose space opera of his first Blanck Mass LP, Power’s latest, ironically, is more ‘traditional’ fare, much more similar to his output with Andrew Hung in Fuck Buttons. He has turned his gaze from out towards the outer limits, inwards, towards the body - its facets and its limits. From the ambience of 'Loam' to the sinisterisms of 'Cruel Sport', the album provokes the question - if we are who we are, but the body is just a body, what else is in there?

Although at times it feels like there is an inherent nihilism to the sonic landscape of Dumb Flesh, as Power stands on the stage in front of a laptop patching modules together, the lights flash and the floor shakes, one feels like in fact the dumb flesh he’s referring to might in fact be the big mass of bodies bobbing in front of him.

That it's been ten years since Weezer last graced Manchester is a fact not lost on tonight's crowd; the anticipation that bristles through the venue as the house lights dim is palpable. That this is only one of two shows the band are playing in the UK is a further fact not lost, with people coming from afar afield as Hamburg to see them, something which not just adds to tonight's expectations, but is also a testament to the devotion Weezer fans harbour.

Understandably, tonight's set is back-boned by material from their most recent record, and though both 'Do You Wanna Get High?' and 'King of the World' are met with a response that would lead one to assume they're staples of the Weezer setlist, other tracks taken from it fall flat in comparison. Arguably this can be attributed to the fact the record was released only two days prior, and as such remains largely unfamiliar.

Fortunately, the same can't be said for the more established tracks. An early pairing of 'My Name is Jonas' and 'Hash Pipe' tease the crowd with the classic material many have come to hear live for the first time, whilst 'Back to the Shack' reminds us just how far Weezer have come since their neurotic 1990s.

While it certainly seems that it's the band's more recent forays in to power-pop that feature predominantly tonight, The Blue Album is represented fairly thoroughly too. 'Say It Aint So' sees a discordant crowd yelling the eponymous line, whilst the set proper is closed out with a rousing rendition of 'Come Undone'.

Taking barely twenty seconds to reappear for an encore, the band launch straight in to 'Beverly Hills' – their most commercially successful track to date and arguably the one which earned them a new generation of fans. It's 'Buddy Holly' with which the band close the night however, a track that both older fans (of which there's an abundance tonight) and the newer set can appreciate equally.

Having been around for over 20 years, it's obvious that Weezer, at least as far as their live shows go, are at the very top of their game and show no sign of slipping. And while the almost record-like quality of some tracks feel a little too polished for live iterations, there's no denying that they're also one of the strongest live bands around.