When I was at Bloodstock this year it was no surprise to see The Almighty’s poster advertising a trio of dates ending in Glasgow on November 30th. They’d pretty much said this would be a regular thing. What did surprise me was seeing 2025’s dates on the same poster. That is very much nailing your live show colours to the mast. It’s nice of the band to do two warmups prior to the big performance in Glasgow on St Andrew’s Day, so thank you to the fans south of the border for their efforts.
This year’s support act are legendary in their own right. Girlschool were given a huge push by Lemmy right back at their inception, who recognised that women can and should rock as hard the the guys. This they have continued to do for decades now, though with some shifts in personnel. Tonight we got to see the band’s new official bassist Olivia Airey, who joined this year. Sadly we didn’t get to see founding member Denise Dufort on drums as she was under the weather, though her place was ably taken by Larry Paterson of Alcatrazz.
Larry took things in his stride as an honorary Girlschool-er, and we were subjected to forty minutes of quality old-school (pun not intended but I’ll take it) heavy metal. The band were tight, fun, and interacted with the audience even if Kim McAuliffe was spending a lot of the time trying not to trip over her lovely pink guitar lead!
Surprisingly a band I’m not hugely familiar with in terms of their music, that didn’t hold me back from thoroughly enjoying their set. They really focussed on their classic material, too, with seven tracks being from the first two albums. Classic metal ages well, and the music sounded as fresh as it would have done from a band who had released is three years ago, never mind 43 years ago!
Towards the end of the set, a suitable cover of Motorhead’s “Bomber” really got the crowd going, and they finished with probably their best-known number “Emergency”, which sounds more punk than metal, but none the worse for it at all. A great opening band, and the perfect warmup for the evening’s headliners.
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OK, so we had one more act squeezed in before Ricky and company. As at last year’s show, a lone piper encouraged the audience to sing along to “Flower of Scotland”… and it didn’t take much encouragement! OK, so now the audience were warmed up.
The Almighty don’t waste time coming onto the stage. With a little bit of a stagger so each member gets a cheer, they’re all onstage within a minute and blasting right into “Crucify”. If there’s a better drum and bass-led intro to a hard rock song, I genuinely don’t know what it is. With “Destroy” and “Do You Understand”, the lone input from Just Add Life, making up the rest of the opening trio I was expecting a bit of chat from Ricky, but no. This was a night where The Almighty were going to waste no time (well, very little) with talk and instead throw classic after classic into our waiting ears.
It’s not all hard rocking ear-bleeders, though. Sandwiched between “Praying To The Red Light” (which never sounded more bluesy) and “Crank And Deceit” was “Little Lost Sometimes” which, no insult intended, could make its money on the country music circuit. Hell, most of my favourite Ricky Warwick numbers are his acoustic / melodic ones, and songs like this show that he’s been writing them for decades. “Bandaged Knees” which came later is of the same ilk, if a bit more rocky, and another of my top Almighty Tunes.
However, it was the end of the set that the crowd was waiting for. Well, not the set ending, but the wave after wave of adrenaline-fueled numbers that they were to end on. “Devil’s Toy”, “Over The Edge” and “Wild & Wonderful” rounded off the main set, the latter with Warwick wandering away from the microphone for the first verse because everyone knows it. The encore, though… “Jesus Loves You… But I Don’t” sliding into “Free ‘n’ Easy”. If the venue hadn’t been a bloody sauna by that point I would have had goosebumps.
There’s no real ceremony at an Almighty show. It’s all about the music and the attitude, the laughs, the smiles and the occasion. Looking around the room, I wonder how many people were here last year, and how many will be back in 365 days time for part three. I know I bloody will be.
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Photos by Alan Swan
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