We're in a Cork music venue, The Cyprus Avenue, backstage with The Twang. It's 10.30pm, and their frontman, Phil, is asking the tour manager where his bottle of brandy is. The tour manager claims not to know, with all the practised casualness of a man whose main pre-gig duty is to keep Phil off the brandy before the show. While his bandmates go for a smoke on the roof, Phil pulls some strings, and five minutes later a roadie returns from the bar with five glasses of brandy. Scooping them all up in his hands, Phil quickly goes to work hiding the drinks in various places around the dressing room. Noticing that we're watching him perform this selfish act, he guiltily asks, 'Erm... do you want a brandy, Maxim?'

'You're praying we say no, aren't you?'

'Here. Have a Corona instead.'

Who are ya?

They like a drink, do The Twang. And the drink likes them. Together they've already yakked up Top 20 anthem 'Wide Awake', and very soon their debut album, Love It When I Feel Like This, will be on at every party you go to over the summer, and you'll spend hours arguing if they sound more like the Happy Mondays or Stone Roses or Oasis. They're in that line of great bands that make music you want to get pissed to with your mates - mainly by being a bunch of mates who get pissed and make music.

'How often do you get paid to go away with your mates and have a drink and play music? It's ace!' That's Martin speaking. He sings alongside Phil and dances around on stage like Bez with less brain damage.

Maxim is in Cork with The Twang on their first tour date in Ireland. The city's sunny today so everyone's getting drunk - by lunchtime, every bit of grass you see has an unconscious piss-head on it. The Twang are right at home here.

Saucy buggers

Besides Phil and Martin - the dual singers and competing motormouths - The Twang are Jon (moody but funny, plays bass like Mani, reputedly the wildest drunk), Stu (hates interviews and foreign food, loves chiming guitars and Baileys cheesecake) and Matty (massive cock, massive drummer, scared 'that they'll stop making beer'). Top lads, every one of them.

Maxim sits them down in a pub for the interview - and to line all our stomachs with Guinness before the proper drinking starts.

'I think if we weren't in a band, we'd be planning to have a gardening business,' says Phil. 'Just so you're working with your mates. You get up in a morning and know you'll have a laugh. That's what it's like being in the band.'

It also offered them a way out of the Birmingham suburb of Bearwood and jobs in an HP Sauce factory (Martin), a hardware shop (Jon), teaching football in schools (Phil) and... hang on, that last one sounds all right. Anyway, the point is, The Twang wanted to go for the big time, and though you might have only just heard of them, they've been plugging away in the West Midlands for years.

'We believed in the band,' says Martin. 'So even though I had to get up at five in the morning to work at the factory, and then go to rehearsals in the evening, it was still ace. Plus, Phil used to organise coach trips up to places like Manchester and Newcastle, so it was always fun.'

'Those coach trips were not just great for getting us a record deal, but are also brilliant memories,' says Phil. 'I mean, getting in a coach with your equipment, a load of crates and your mates - it's fucking funny. There's lads who watched us in the very beginning - back when we just used to play ridiculous, pissed-up gigs and were pretty shit - and they loved it, went mad, and came to every show. We still sort that lot out for tickets.'

Bullsh*tting

While they wait to do the soundcheck, The Twang decide the Guinness tastes no different in Ireland, get as much smoking in as possible and discuss wrestling. Phil invents a wrestling alter-ego called 'The Worm', while Matt says his favourite wrestler is 'Giant Gonzales', but no one believes that he exists. Being both the drummer and the youngest, Matt is of course a bit of a nutter.

So what are they going to buy when the money starts rolling in?

'Matty's going to buy a pub,' says Martin. 'What's it going to be called, Matty?'

'The Bollock Inn,' he replies.

'Yeah. And instead of a sign, you could have a big pair of bollocks hanging down,' suggests Jon, helpfully.

'And in the beer garden, instead of a normal slide, you've got a pair of balls you climb up, then slide down the cock!' says Martin, starting to get very enthusiastic.

'And I'd have a ball pit filled with dildos,' declares Matt.

'F**king hell!' says everyone else, before Jon adds that punters would have to 'jump in arse first'. Sounds like the drink's getting its claws in...

Taking the p*ss

One of the main problems The Twang have to deal with is trying to not get so pissed during the day that they can't play that night.

'You think it's all rock 'n' roll, but if you go on properly scuttered, you're sh*t,' says Phil. 'It's not fair on the fans.'

Despite such responsibilities, their drinking remains monumental, and has led to The Twang being labelled a 'hooligan band' by scaredy London music journalists.

'I weigh 10 stone, man. Who am I going to beat up?' says Phil. 'We're normal lads, so when we have a drink, we play up. But no worse than what you and your mates would do. If you and your mates have six Stellas, don't tell me that one of you isn't going to play up.'

However, hampering efforts to play up tonight are Phil and Jon's girlfriends, who have come along to put the handbrake on their antics slightly. As such, Phil's girl picks a nice tapas restaurant to eat at before the gig. Upon arrival, Stu takes one look at a menu filled with couscous and hummus, says, 'I'm not eating that crap,' and storms out. It's fair to say The Twang don't eat posh very often, but once we've discovered they serve other stuff (it took a while before anyone thought to turn the menu over) they're good.

'Oi, Maxim, I bet you never expected to eat monkfish with The Twang,' says Phil.

Very true - but then we haven't added wine to the equation yet. Matty and Jon have a quick conference about whether it's a good idea: 'We're not on till 11. I might just have beer.' 'Let's just get one bottle in and share it between all of us. OK, two.' Getting the right level of drunkenness is all-important. Too drunk and you let everyone down by not being able to play. Too sober, and you're just not The Twang.

Storming show

Backstage, the band are downing spirits, and it turns out that Phil's pre-gig brandy is indeed purposely rationed by the tour manager: 'He hides it from us until half an hour before we go on.'

Stu shows up, grinning. 'I had a lamb roast with Bailey's cheesecake for afters and a pint. It only came to £13! Brilliant!'

Once on stage, the group are massively entertaining. Stu is getting all Johnny Marr in the corner, Matty is hammering away and pulling faces at Stu, who is in turn taking the piss out of Phil, who is busy taking the piss out of his own face which is being beamed onto a projection screen next to the stage, while Martin bounces around with his fist in the air. They're clearly having the time of their lives, and the Cork crowd grin and bray like donkeys on gin. Are you sick of bands whining on about how difficult it is to be on tour? Well, get this lot down your neck.

Aftershow onslaught

'OiwhatdidyouthinkMaximIthought thatwasf*ckinggreatwherewegoingnow?'It's full steam ahead on the good ship P*ss-Up, and Captain Phil is at the wheel. Singer, ringleader, non-stop talker, amateur wrestler, he's a funny bastard, and he's brandied off his box. So off we trot to the local rock 'n' roll bar where the group get hugged and snogged and battered beyond belief. Phil's saying to his girlfriend, 'We'll go in one second,' then whispering to Maxim, 'Get us a brandy and Coke.' Then they start playing the single 'Wide Awake', and Phil wants to go outside because it's embarrassing, but once we get there Maxim starts getting all 'Hey, I love you guys!' because the tour manager gave us Ian Brown's favourite cocktail (Guinness, Tia Maria and vodka). And then it's really late, and we're a bit sicky-mouthed, and we're shouting all the way back to the hotel, because Cork's gone all Twangy...

The Twang, in short:

Phil: 'We're best mates and we have been for ages. We're achieving something, and its f**king great.'

The Twang's genius debut album, Love It When I Feel Like This, is out now. Read Maxim's Review here