After a decent performance from industrial metallers BRANDON ASHLEY & THE SILVERBUGS, backed up by a stunning, scantily clad cheerleader, the retro metal of Sweden’s FATAL SMILE had the audience rocking with both bands ultimately doing a great job of warming up the crowd for the main event. Despite problems early in the set with the bass guitar, FATAL SMILE won the crowd over quite quickly with some great songs, and a stage presence that would have made them rock heroes 25 years ago.

LORDI are best known for their exploits at the 2006 Eurovision song contest, where they won the competion with a record high score. Predictably, the song that won that competion, ‘Hard Rock Hallelujah’ was the closing, encore song, and it capped off a fantastic hour and a half of top-drawer, shock rock entertainment.

The music of LORDI is assumed by many to be death metal, but if you tihink that, then you’re obviously getting them confused with the similarly (in the grand scheme of things) dressed GWAR. In fact, LORDI play a modern-tinged brand of hard rock, with a tongue-in-cheek, b-movie monster twist. The set’s opening pairing of ‘Girls Go Chopping’ and ‘They Only Come Out At Night’ are perfect examples, and both are really good songs, of which there were also plenty more in the remainder of the set.

LORDI’s stage show is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The influences? Well, ALICE COOPER of course, and by the time my hair was covered in the fake blood of Mr.Lordi, I’d have to name GWAR as another influence (although the place would have been flooded with blood if Mr.Urungus had been around). LORDI really do put on a fantastic show, with great music, and brilliant monster antics fit for a theatre stage.

Ratings:

LORDI 4.8/5.0
FATAL SMILE 4.5/5.0
BRANDON ASHLEY & THE SILVERBUGS 3.8/5.0

Review by James Allman

Photography by Alexander Shaw (click here)