The Almighty, Mr. Big and Living Colour bring a sensational Steelhouse Festival 2024 to a close

Hangovers notwithstanding, and with that rarely seen golden orb continuing to adorn Welsh skies, there’s no reason for anyone to not be feeling the vibes on Sunday. Merchants are beaming, reporting good sales, and the queues for the ever popular Planet Rock signing tent are growing, as artist after artist grabs their opportunity to press the flesh and meet the real people for themselves.

While 12:15 is an early time to be hitting the stage, the opportunity isn’t lost on 21-year-old singer-songwriter Cassidy Paris. With a part-Welsh band, and her dad on bass, the Australian artist follows up last year’s Rockstock debut with a big stage performance worthy of the occasion. It’s judiciously radiant hard rock, songs like the smoothly glossy ‘Danger’ drawing immediate comparison with the more up tempo material Heart once opened their albums with.

Dan Byrne makes his full band appearance after that, and kicking things off with recent Planet Rock favourite ‘Hard To Breathe’ is a confident statement. Many might leave such a defiant crowd-pleaser till last, but Dan’s got strength in numbers now, including ‘Hate Me’, a new song that rides in hard on a tasty Glenn Quinn riff. During a revamped ‘Wide Awake’, originally recorded for Revival Black’s 2019 debut, Byrne sounds appreciably like a young Glenn Hughes, that voice revealing great heights and surprising depths that are thankfully anything but hidden today.

For American man-mountain singer and guitarist Jared James Nichols, Steelhouse is a typical summer hoedown. His bluesy, country-fried blend of Skynyrd and Cream is pure 1970s time travel, and unless that’s simply a very small guitar he’s holding, that man’s shoulders look about as broad as the Grand Canyon. It’s predictable enough, but delivered with a spirit that totally befits the occasion, and a surprising cover of ‘War Pigs’ is notably well played.

On that 70s road trip, there’s every chance Jared has had encounters with The Commoners at some time-warp roadside diner in America’s dustbowl south. The latter are actually from Canada, and today sound as authentic as the Black Crowes or anything that pulls at the heartstrings with similar purity. ‘The Way I Am’ and ‘Fill My Cup’ both have those big soulful hearts, joyful hooks that owe as much to gospel as to rock, and all built from Ross Citrullo’s rootsy, vibe-heavy guitar foundations.

While there was comfortable familiarity in the latter, there were more question marks about what exactly The Last Internationale would bring here. An independent band from New York with no label or management, it’s fair to say they went off like a socially conscious cluster bomb. After a furiously fun take on MC5 classic ‘Kick Out The Jams’, this outfit – fronted brilliantly by the effervescent Delila Paz – mates hellfire soul with fiery, aggro rock. Edgey Pires’ riffs stutter and shake like Tom Morello’s might, and Delila is sufficiently in the moment to alter song lyrics to respond to shouts from the crowd. She even gets down in that crowd, with the very people she’s connecting with, and if that wasn’t enough, they bring out Mr. Big’s bass legend Billy Sheehan to play on an enjoyably frenzied ‘1968’.

You need big rock moments to top that – but guess what, here comes Living Colour. Their entrance might be strangely casual, muted even, but you don’t need big gestures when you can play and sing like this. They evoke all sorts of feelings, their genre-mashing and ground-breaking material like ‘Funny Vibe’, the twisted calypso of ‘Glamour Boys’, and their beautiful ‘Love Rears Its Ugly Head’ all happy echoes of a fertile time in rock that saw people of different background, musical and racial, discovering exciting common ground. There’s Doug Wimbish’s dazzling slap bass and perhaps above all, Mr Vernon Reid, a guitarist playing notes you didn’t know existed. His contorted face is a picture as he flexes out this open-ended genius – we just drink it in.

Having already been treated to a flash of Billy Sheehan’s genius, the Steelhouse faithful is more than ready to salute Mr. Big, a band now on its final lap. A big show like this is a fitting way for a great act to bow out, and given Eric Martin’s vocal issues, it seems like the right decision. Eric is a good guy who nobody would speak ill of, and he’s been honest enough about the problems he’s facing. Tonight he finds ways of dealing with stuff; new angles, new ways of emoting – and he pulls the crowd with him. Sheehan, guitarist Paul Gilbert and current drummer Edu Cominato all supply strong backing vocals, bringing ‘Addicted To That Rush’, ‘To Be With You’ and a delightfully florid ‘Green-Tinted Sixties Mind’ back to life one last time. It isn’t the greatest Mr. Big performance, but it is the fondest of farewells.

In those precious moments before a band goes on stage, nobody in rock looks more intense than Ricky Warwick. He strides out from the dressing room, head to foot in black, hair slicked back, a frown so deep his eyes are barely open. This is the coiled up spring that’s going to be unleashed in 90 frankly unforgettable minutes, as reunited Brit metal legends The Almighty bring blood, fire and love to the Steelhouse stage.

Backed simply by a huge logo and a stack of speakers, The Almighty are undimmed by time. If anything they’re more focused, more enlivened and utterly committed to what is an almost unique coagulation of Lemmy-approved heft, dynamism and brutally free-spirited song making. ‘Resurrection Mutha’ is the not remotely understated opener, and out comes ‘Power’, ‘Devil’s Toy’ and even the grunge metal likes of ‘Wrench’ and ‘Addiction’. It’s worth noting that the band’s apparently ageless guitarist Andy ‘Tantrum’ McCafferty only played on the first two Almighty albums, but sounds as unrepentantly glorious on the ‘later’ stuff as on those earlier bruisers.

If you’re experienced enough to remember the 1990s, the shrieking shards of guitar that introduce ‘Jonestown Mind’ send blood pumping to parts that might not have been reached recently, while in contrast ‘Little Lost Sometimes’ is a standalone moment of reflection, lighters and phone lights raised. The passage of time has only deepened and darkened its meaning, and if there was something in your eye while Ricky’s chesty voice was surging, unclouded, through the words “we’re all searching for deliverance”, rest assured you weren’t alone.

There’s something unifying about The Almighty, and we realise it now more than ever. It is the music of rebels and open roads and throaty exhausts, but it’s also something that brings rock fans together in defiance of mediocrity. Ricky jokes that this is only the line-up’s fourth gig in 31 years, but perhaps more significant is that Steelhouse is the revived band’s only festival appearance. It’s what happens when you do things right. It’s also the dark cherry on top of another enticing, palatably varied and well organised event. If time is as kind to us as it has been to The Almighty, we’ll be doing it all again next year.

See 122 photos of Sunday at Steelhouse Festival 2024:

REVIEW: Friday at Steelhouse Festival 2024

REVIEW: Saturday at Steelhouse Festival 2024

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