STEEL PANTHER | LIVE REVIEW
Motorpoint Arena Cardiff, Sun 16 Oct
On paper you probably wouldn’t really think it, but the bands gracing the stage Sunday evening at Motorpoint Arena Cardiff have a combined experience of nigh on 80 years in the business. To many, the show would have come across as a farcical evening of nonsense – on the contrary, it was quite the masterclass.
Motorpoint Arena is pretty much full for tonight’s openers Buckcherry. The veteran rockers warm the capacity crowd from the get go, racing through a back catalogue of hits including a pretty good cover of Icona Pop’s I Love it (albeit renamed Say Fuck It). Sharing support duty on the night are pop-punk rockers Bowling For Soup; I turned up thinking they’d be well past their sell-by date, but to my surprise they sounded exactly as they did 20-odd years ago. A fun set included hits 1985, Always and their most notable hit Girl All The Bad Guys Want.
Main eventers Steel Panther keep the crowd waiting, but as soon as they hit the stage, it was full throttle for the next two hours. If you were a little sensitive to swearing, sexual innuendos and general filthy chat, you were definitely in the wrong place. Set openers Eyes Of A Panther, Just Like Tiger Woods, and Party Like Tomorrow Is The End Of The World gear the crowd up before hilarious fan favourites Asian Hooker and Let Me Cum In draw laughs and roars of applause. Lead guitarist Satchel takes centre stage for a guitar solo mid-set, and jaw-dropping it was too – something to rival a Van Halen effort.
A keen fan was dragged from the crowd to sit onstage while the four band members continue to ‘serenade’ her with on-the-spot rhyming songs under the title of her name, Harriet. Girl From Oklahoma gets a barrel of laughs, while about 25 women are pulled on stage for 17 Girls In A Row and Gloryhole. Steel Panther anthem Death To All But Metal wrapps the main set up before the band then took their exit, briefly returning for a confetti-ridden encore of Party All Day (Fuck All Night) accompanied by female rock trio, The Lounge Kittens.
Despite the band’s average age of forty-something, Steel Panther are on the ball, have more than paid their dues from their days on the Sunset Strip, and truly deserve their arena tour headline spots. An absolutely hilarious night of parody glam rock.
words OWEN SCOURFIELD photos GARETH BULL