Opening proceedings tonight were young British metal three piece FURY UK, who’s support slot with Y&T comes hot on the heels of the release of excellent new album, ‘A Way of Life’. Fast becoming known for their explosive live performances, FURY UK duly delivered a blistering set, with frontman Chris Appleton impressing as always on the lead guitar, particularly with the orgasmic solo in set closer ‘Death By Lightning’. What was a shame is that most of the crowd missed a large proportion of the FURY UK set as the band were on stage at 6:45pm due to the venue’s early Saturday curfew.

With the 10pm curfew taking into consideration, Y&T were on stage at bang on 7:45pm, making sure that they could deliver their usual minimum 2 hour setlist of molten heavy metal. Still, the clock ticked past 10pm before final song ‘Rescue Me’ had come to an end, proving once again that Y&T are a band who will never sell their fans short.

After impressing audiences with red hot live shows for the past few years, finally Y&T have finally gone back into the studio, the result of which is the tremendous new album ‘Facemelter’, Y&T’s best record since their early 1980′s hey day. ‘On With The Show’ is an instant classic, and ranks alongside ‘Hurricane’ and ‘Open Fire’ as ferocious Y&T set openers. New video track ‘I’m Coming Home’ is also a new live classic, and ‘Shine On’, ‘Blind Patriot’ and ‘Losing My Mind’ all went down well, as the band made no excuses for including a good chunk of new material.

Glorious ballad ‘If You Want Me’ was dedicated to bass player Phil Kennemore, who co-wrote the song with Dave Meniketti. Kennemore is absent on the tour as he undergoes treatment of cancer. His temporary replacement Brad Lang, who’s CV includes a stint with Jeff Pilson in WAR & PEACE, did a super job of filling in. Y&T fans (including Baconmusic!) around the world will keep their fingers crossed that Kennemore will be back on the road in the future, and they can another chance to shout ‘F.U. Phil!!!’ as he rips through ‘Squeeze’.

The rest of tonight’s set was packed with Y&T classics, with 22 songs played in total, with the only brief respite coming through the mid-set drum solo by Mike Vanderhule. Frontman Dave Meniketti is one of rock’s true geniuses. A great singer, great guitarist, and great songwriter, Meniketti shows true feeling as he churns out the awesome solos on ‘I Believe in You’ and ‘Forever’.

Y&T have toured the UK for 6 years running now, and you can almost guarantee that they’ll be back next Autumn. Every year, the crowd they play to gets a little bit bigger and people go home and tell their friends how brilliant a live band they are. Soon, they’re gonna have to start booking bigger venues, as it seems the long overdue success may finally be coming to rock and metal’s most underated band of all time. It seems that more and more people are finally discovering that Y&T are one of the very best live metal bands on the planet. Certainly, anyone who came to Rock City tonight would not disagree.

Rating 5.0/5.0

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