This will rape your mother, kill your father and then eat you.

The Relentless Energy Shot.  In its surprisingly utilitarian ‘cheap plastic bottle with a label glued on’ packaging, you could be forgiven for thinking that the purchase of one of these things might be an ego-boosting stroke of forward planning.  “Aha!”, you think to yourself, as I did. “I’ll buy a few of these, carry them around in my bag and when I’m knackered I’ll knock one back, wake up a bit and everything will be fine.”

Well, you’re half right. Two things went through my mind when I opened this bottle and poured it into my mouth.  The first was, “Sod the Quick Energy Shot, this is what pure industrialism would taste like”, and the second was “OH GOD I CAN STILL TASTE IT SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME OH GOD.”

Yes, I’m afraid so.  It tastes horrendous.  Fortunately, we’re only talking about – in the marketing blurb’s own words – a ’shot’.  50ml, to be precise.  And I’ll give it its dues, after you’ve swallowed it down, wondered how something can taste this metallic and artificial and still not be corrosive, and rinsed out your mouth with something, anything that tastes less disgusting, you will experience what I can only describe as an ethereal roundhouse kick delivered right to the very centre of your consciousness.  There’s only 80mg of caffeine in this, as well as the obligatory taurine, inositol and gluconurolactone, but for some reason it hits you a lot harder than a can of your favourite Red Bull-alike.

I spent the first ten minutes wondering if I was vibrating fast enough to walk through walls.  This is a brutal, brutal energy drink, and it is going to give you the shakes. I drink a fairly reasonable amount of coffee / Red Bull / ’stuff what makes you go’, and the buzz that I got from this was quietly peeking over the wall on the uncomfortable side of things.  Then again, I did have it in the office, and I get the feeling that if you were expending plenty of energy then it might be quite a pleasant experience.