So much black in view, everyone was in black but the imagery on the t-shirts was very well split between all three acts due on tonight. KK’s Steelmill has become one of THE venues to go to for music of all types – tonight it was rock, rock and more rock!

The room wasn’t quite full as Phil Campbell and his Bastard Sons come on stage. He’s no stranger to these parts and the welcome was above ‘warm’. With long time friend Joel Peters, who I originally knew from his time with Fury, now at the front of the band whacking out the vocals, this was to be my initiation ceremony for PCaTBS!

With an eight-song set taking in material from the two most recent albums, Absurdity and We’re the Bastards, the band aptly kick off with We’re the Bastards and me getting the finger, much to the other photographers chagrin, from Joel! Young Mr. Peters seems to have taken well to his role as frontman and vocalist, giving the audience the ‘come 0n’ whenever he could, he really is a very good singer, I’m not sure why he’s waited so long for this opportunity; but all credit to Phil and the boys who obviously recognised the vocal quality.

I guess the two main highlights of the short set were the Motörhead staples Born to Raise Hell and, of course, Ace of Spades, which encouraged audience participation and closed the set to quite deafening cheers and applause.

It’s been a few years since I’d seen the quite manic Michael Monroe, in fact the last time was him supporting Alice Cooper in the depths of Devon in 2015. I’m sure he has a picture in his attic that ages instead of him because after seven years, he looked no different and he was as bendy as I remember. Tonight he’d been let off his chain because he must have covered the stage area many times over as he raced around pumping out fan favourites.

The band opened with One Man Gang, I Live Too Fast to Die Young and Murder the Summer of Love but the ‘undercard’ to these included Last Train To Tokyo, Malibu Beach Nightmare and Dead, Jail or Rock’n’Roll with a few others thrown in to make the audience join in which the not so young Mr. Monroe climbed on board the speaker stacks, did the splits (which always looks painful to me) and generally gave it everything he had while Steve Conte pulled faces, played guitar and sang along too. The set finished with the all-time Creedence Clearwater Classic Up Around the Bend.

It was fast approaching Black Star Riders time! This promised to be a loooooong set with 20 songs on the setlist and with Scott Gorham pencilled in as guest guitarist it was going to be interesting to see how new kid on the block, Sam Wood, taking over Scott’s guitar duties was fitting in.

This is the Riders’ 10^th Anniversary and they planned to celebrate it in style. The band open with Pay Dirt, Another State of Grace then Better Than Saturday Night, all from the two most recent albums. In fact the band’s latest album, Wrong Side of Paradise, yielded several of the songs that followed and they included a rather mental version of the Osmond’s Crazy Horses, also released at their new single – Black Star Riders that is, not the Osmonds! Sam Wood seemed to be doing really rather well with a broad grin permanently on show, his skills are quite awesome.

We’re seven songs in and it’s time to bring out the ‘old warhorse’, Scott Gorham. The support for him was deafening and it was nice to see him back on stage. The band track back to their first album and play the title track, All Hell Breaks Loose followed by Bloodshot from the same album. Scott Gorham fits back in seamlessly and shows that he hasn’t lost any of his skills – I hope he can take these to realise his promise of resurrecting Thin Lizzy again.

Speaking of Thin Lizzy, it’s fitting that this little segment finishes with one of the band’s anthems; Don’t Believe a Word with Ricky Warwick being somewhat drowned out by the audience singing along.

Where Wrong Side of Paradise dominated the first half of the set it was All Hell Breaks Loose that took over for the send half. With songs like Before the War, Kingdom of the Lost and Bound for Glory on show it was again quite fitting that another Thin Lizzy favourite was scheduled; this time it was Jailbreak, which was fabulous to hear. The night was closed out with Finest Hour from The Killer Instinct album and then it was time to go home, part deaf, wholly satisfied but not before Ricky Warwick announced that there could be another ten years of this band who have shrugged off the legacy of Thin Lizzy and made a sound all of their own.

Words & images: Reg Richardson

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