Live Review: The Almighty - KK's Steel Mill, Wolverhampton
Support: Girlschool
29th November 2024
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch
It’s a trip down to the Black Country for this second, annual jaunt of a three-date mini-tour, taking in St Andrew’s day at the Barrowlands in Glasgow, by the All-Loud, All-Wild, All-flippin’-Mighty.
It’s been nearly fifteen-years since I was last in Wolverhampton for a gig; that snowy January night was at the Wulfrun Hall for Napalm Death’s Nightmare After Christmas show with Anaal Nathrakh and The Rotted. I remember getting rendered in the Gifford Arms that night and forgetting which hotel room I was staying in… Ah, bostin’ times!
It’s always good to get alternative perspectives on shows, and seeing bands in different locations certainly provides that. The vast majority of the gigs I attend are in Manchester, so I feel I know what a Mancunian crowd is about; a new venue in a new town was always going to add an extra level of interest to the show.
Seventies survivors and stalwarts of the time before the New Wave of British Heavy Metal – and a time when the Glass Ceiling was rigidly intact – Girlschool are always a welcome addition to any bill on which they appear. Genre contemporaries of Saxon, Motorhead and Maiden, by rights, the band should be regularly playing sold-out theatre shows and be constant festival fixtures. And it’s to their collective credit that, original members Kim McAuliffe and Denise Dufort, are still flying their flag forty-six years later. I first saw the band opening for Gary Glitter at Preston Guild Hall back in 1988, at the wrong ‘un’s Christmas Gang Show; fear not, I was in no danger, being eighteen at the time!
That said, Denise hasn’t made tonight’s show and has a replacement in her seat, but quarter-century lead guitarist, Jackie Chambers and new bassist Olivia Airey, complete the line-up and ably demonstrate Girlschool can still stand toe-to-toe with any of their contemporaries.
Building their set heavily from the 1981 album, Hit and Run, the ladies bookend the show with tunes from the debut, Demolition; Demolition Boys gets things going with some driving, tried and trusted heavy drums, C’mon Let’s Go sees Kim very much playing to the crowd and getting the response she desired, while both The Hunter and Hit and Run are enough to take us back to those heady days of the early Eighties.
Yet, and it must be remembered. Girlschool have been consistently releasing albums since 1980, up to last years’ WTFortfive? full-length. To remind us of this, the band slip in It Is What It Is from that record, on the heels of a couple of deeper cuts from Hit and Run, Future Flash and Kick It Down. Comparing the songs separated by forty-two years it become evident that, regardless of the personnel changes, Girlschool have remained faithful to their original blueprint, even in the face of shifting musical sands.
Screaming Blue Murder, The Gun’s Race With the Devil and their cover of Bomber from the St Valentine’s Day Massacre EP, lead us into the set closer, Emergency, and one cannot really imagine a better opening act for The Almighty than these ladies. They encapsulate that hard-edged rock n’ roll spirit the four Scotsmen of the Apocalypse imbued in their Nineties work.
The hardest working man (or woman) in rock, Ricky Warwick has taken a break from his commitments with Black Star Riders and preparation for his upcoming Fighting Hearts album – which will see him supporting Stiff Little Fingers in the spring – to again join up with his Almighty band mates for three shows. St Andrew’s Day in Glasgow in the fulcrum, with the band stopping at various other cities around the country. Last year it was London and Manchester, next is Nottingham and Portsmouth as well as the just announced headliner at Stonedead next summer.
Crucify hits like the band has never been away, Destroyed finds fist and voices raised and the most recent song of the set, Do You Understand? have all come and gone before Ricky addressed the Steel Mill with the simple question: “Have you missed us?”
The resounding answer is Yes, Ricky, we have. Just looking around the room, you can see we’re predominantly of certain age and here is a band that means so much to us, back to replay the soundtrack of our wasted youth. Wrench and Ultraviolence are aired from the Crank album, with the former having a massive stomp that you can almost chew on. That slow and heavy riffing is continued on Addiction, a contrast to the exuberance of Gift Horse, introduced as the first song the band ever wrote.
Preying to the Red Light finds Floyd’s bass rumbling away and the crowd find their voices to out sing Ricky on the hugely poignant Little Lost Sometimes, which sees couples, deep into relationships, remembering the significance of the song.
The Almighty’s punkier side comes out on Crank and Deceit, Way Beyond Belief and the ferocious Jonestown Mind, set aside for the early metal of Power. Bandaged Knees gives another change to sing, and Wolverhampton take hold of that chance; Devil’s Toy is always a fan favourite, especially with that pseudo-western guitar sound, and the set closer of Wild and Wonderful takes us all back to 1990, when it was a good a reason as any to shout swear words at the top of your voice.
Jesus Loves You… and Free n’ Easy finish the nostalgia of the night and it’s a walk down Memory Lane I would gladly take on a weekly basis. There’s no Heirs or Graces about these mini-tours; just a simply but effective light show and a wall of Marshall amplifiers, through which our favourite band of the era crank out the music that went some way to define our taste moving forward.
The show last year at the Academy was my Gig of the Year and this show was damn-near as good. But for the fact that the wait had been sixteen years up to the Manchester show, and just one leading to Wolverhampton, it would very likely have pricked the same grown-man-in-tears reaction from last December.
Wonder if it’s too early to get down to Newark for a prime position at the Showgrounds? Probably best to get Christmas out of the way first…
Photo Credits: Tim Finch Photography
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