Tonight Skindred brought their Sound The Siren tour to their home town of Newport when they stopped by at The Neon which happens to be a newly opened venue which recently saw the old Odeon cinema which previously occupied the premises turned into a new live music and comedy venue called The Neon and tonight was the first time the venue has hosted metal music and what a better way to do so than home town heroes Skindred.
Skindred have been a band for nearly twenty years now and over that time they have released six studio albums including their latest album ‘Volume’ and they have also toured all across the world with their own headline shows whilst also supporting the likes of Rob Zombie, Steel Panther and playing pretty much every alternative music festival you can think of and thanks to their heavy touring schedule and solid performance they have become one of the most talked about live bands in the UK and tonight there home town fans saw exactly why.
The main support band tonight was Camden, London political-ska-punks The King Blues, a band who I have been dying to see on the live scene again since they reformed back in 2015 and tonight they looked as dapper as ever taking to the stage in smart clothes ready to unleash their catchy political songs for the next 45minutes.
The King Blues kicked their set off with ‘Lets Hang The Landlord’ a song taken from their classic 2008 album ‘Save The World, Get The Girl’ which happens to be the album where majority of the bands songs played tonight came from with the likes of ‘The Streets Are Ours’, ‘I Got Love’, ‘My Boulder’ and ‘Save The World, Get The Girl’ all being played tonight as well as new single ‘Off With Their Heads ‘.
Not long after The King Blues opened up with ‘Lets Hang The Landlord’ frontman Itch jumped off the stage and made his way to the crowd shaking hands with the lucky fans in at the front whilst passionately singing along whilst the rest of the band energetically jammed along on stage and the energy was kept up for the whole set with Itch remaining on stage for the duration.
As soon at the clocks hit 9.30pm the lights in the Neon dimmed and the classic AC/DC track ‘Thunderstruck’ was played through the speakers which was then followed up by John Williams Imperial March’ with Mikey Demus, Dan Pugsley, Arya Goggin and Dan Strugess making their way to the stage with frontman Benji Webbe making his grand entrance moments later to huge screams from the fans.
Wasting no time Skindred blasted straight into ‘Under Attack’ which is the opening song from their latest album ‘Volume’ and minutes into the song Benji Webbe’s microphone failed on him but he took it well and quickly grabbed another microphone and carried on like an F1 pit stop tyre change moment.
In-between most songs Benji Webbe had a lot of banter with the crowd and at one point jokingly telling the crowd they were cunts and also saying that the crowd in Middleborough a couple of nights ago was better, this was bet by loud boo’s from his home town crowd but was quickly turned around when Benji Webbe worked the crowd up to chant and scream along at the top of their lungs which was loud but still slightly disappointing from a home town crowd.
Benji Webbe also talked about how he used to go to the Neon when he was a kid but back then it was an Odeon cinema and the first couple of films he saw there was Jaws and Rocky and he went on to act out key moments from each film whilst he band played out the key music from each film, this was met with laughter and excitement from the crowd.
Through their set Skindred smashed out many fan favourites such as ‘Rat Race’, ‘Doom Riff’, ‘Ninja’, ‘Sound The Siren’, ‘Pressure’, ‘Kill The Power’ whilst also throwing in a few covers for good measures which consisted of House Of Pains ‘Jump Around’ and Justin Biebers ‘Sorry’ which opened with a strange reaction from the crowd who were quickly turned around and getting into the song.
The set came to an end with the mosh-tastic ‘Nobody’ which really got the pit moving and as soon as Skindred left the stage the fans started chanting their name and 5minutes later Skindred returned to the stage to the music of Black Sabbaths ‘War Pigs’ and then blasted straight into ‘Warning’ the song that everyone had been waiting all night for with many people in the crowd taking their tops off and doing the Newport helicopter many minutes before Benji Webbe shouted out “You know what time it is, I want to see every one of you motherfuckers doing the Newport helicopter’, and as soon as he said it the venue became a sea of propellers as hundreds of fans whipped there tops over there head as fast as possible for the remainder of the song.
Overall it was a great experience to see Skindred play their first home town show in years however I feel the crowd was a bit stale tonight but maybe I was expecting too much with it being a home town show, secondly the venue was nice but they need to invest in some friendly staff and a better lighting rig as the whole band apart from frontman Benji Webbe was surrounded in darkness for the night and lastly Skindred put on one hell of a show like they always do but it was slightly on the short side of things running at just over an hour.
The King Blues 4/5
Skindred 4/5
Review By Trigger
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