Puerto Rico’s Davila 666 and Detroit’s The Dirtbombs teamed up last night to destroy the Knitting Factory by bringing a little slice of last year’s Scion Garage Rock Festival to Brooklyn. Though the weather was furious, the real raging storm was inside with driving powerful pop sensibilities so fierce it inspired an all female mosh pit near the front of the stage and I managed to dance myself sober. Twice.

Davila 666 is the creation of Carlito Davilia, a Puerto Rican who came to Seattle looking for the Grunge Rock renaissance but arrived a few years late. Thanks to the friendship with a coworker in a thriftstore he discovered Garage Rock and upon returning home, started a new band to encapsulate the best elements of all the music he had learned about managing to release a few singles and a killer album. They self-describe as “pop” or “Menuedo on Drugs” and both are pretty accurate. Davila 666 is the essence of the dirty Sixties music from Stax style soul to expansive rock like Question Mark and the Mysterians, to blasts of Motor City fury like the MC5 but all crafted with the collective understanding of what makes people dance.

Taking to the stage, six members deep, Davila 666 put on a show as if no one told them that they were the openers. They played intense party music at a hundred miles an hour with guitars lines moved like muscle cars overtaking people’s inhibitions. An all female mosh pit opened up to the right of me, and so taken even I, the most stoic of New York audience members, danced through their whole set until at the end, I was as sweaty as the performers on the stage. When their set time had ended, the cries of “Uno mas! Uno mas!” lured them back to the stage where they proceeded to belt out one more amazing song. I was unfamiliar with this band before last night, but I was made into a true believer ready to spread the gospel placing orders for their self-titled album, as there was no merch available last night. If the slate of “Garage” Rock that sprung up around the start of last decade depressed you as scarves and denim replaced the spandex and leather Hair “Metal” of the 80s, you should absolutely check out Davila 666.

Though Davila 666 put on one hell of a show, the headliner of the night was The Dirtbombs. A Garage Rock band from Detroit that though has been around since the mid-90s, it is really thanks to the aforementioned Garage Rock revival that they’ve been brought to the forefront of consciousness on any sort of national level. Starting as a side project, The Dirtbombs has been a deliberate attempt to emulate acts of old, intended to only release singles, each focusing on a different style of music different from one other. At the insistence of Los Angeles based In the Red Records, the nearly 20-year-old keeper of the Garage Rock flame, The Dirtbombs have been persuaded to release four albums and one compilation, each pulling influences from a wide variety of sources and processed and reassessed and readdressed in the way of the best musicians working in older styles.

Live, Mick Collins is amazing. As the lead singer and guitarist of The Dirtbombs, his unstoppable energy and verve on stage were at times unmatched (if not unmatchable) by the audience as he and the rhythm heavy Dirtbombs went through a great set playing newer songs and old favorites, undeterred even when he broke a string seconds into the first song he grabbed a guitar of Davila 666’s and kept playing.

Having never seen them live, they certainly matched up with expectations and their reputation is one that is well deserved. Dancing, strutting, shuffling with a swagger pulling out song after song after song as calculated to make you dance with the precision of a techno surgeon. The encore was fun as well with one of the two drummers dismantling his kit putting it in the audience and playing surrounded by fans while Mick and the rest of the Dirtbombs did their best to tear up the stage.

At the end of the show, we wearily gathered our stuff and trekked out into the night happy, exhausted, and ready for warm beds as the words to “Underdog” bounced in our heads.