It is usually jazz musicians or avant-garde composers who make a virtue out of keeping one jump ahead of their audience, not rock’n’roll groups from the backwoods of Tennessee. But Kings of Leon, the three Followill brothers and their first cousin, have always been inclined to keep their fans on their toes.

Arriving at the tail end of the NME’s marathon season of awards shows at the Astoria, they previewed a tranche of unfamiliar songs from their third album, Because of the Times, which will be released on April 2.

The album marks a bold step forwards, and this was an edgy, unpredictable and not altogether comfortable performance, not least for the band themselves.

Caleb, the singer, seemed particularly out of sorts, gesticulating repeatedly in the direction of the mixing desk in the wings, to indicate his dissatisfaction with the sound in his monitor speakers. The sound out front was not very pleasant either. Loud, harsh and tinny, it left no room for the subtlety and dynamics of the songs to emerge, which was especially disappointing given the ambitious scope of the new material.

Beginning with Black Thumbnail, a number that changed from the deceptively jaunty melody of the verse to a blast of heavy metal thunder in the chorus, they bashed through songs old and new with a ferocious intensity, but little of the joyous energy that is usually their calling card.

Matthew kept his eyes clamped firmly on the fretboard of his guitar as he manoeuvred his way around the high, stinging lead lines, and even Jared seemed unusually subdued as he pumped out his bass parts. Only the drummer, Nathan, now clean-shaven and blowing extravagant shapes from a chunk of pink bubblegum, looked at ease as he negotiated the sudden stops and galloping tom tom fills of The Bucket, or punched out the fast, fractured boogie beat of Four Kicks.

Far from being discouraged, the audience responded to songs both new and old with indiscriminate enthusiasm and much spraying of lager throughout. My Party, with its staccato riff, odd time signature and heavy compression effect on Caleb’s vocal, was one of several songs that seemed to come properly into focus only moments before it was over.

However, the long, drifting encore of Arizona, followed by Charmer — a song that had all the rampant, angular aggression of a Pixies track — brought the show to a promising conclusion.

Let’s hope the dust has settled a bit by the time their UK tour opens on April 14.

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