MUSIC

Thekla, Bristol (Thur 13 Oct) On paper, joining your own former support band seems like an odd career move. But it's actually a natural progression for genre-defying Napalm Death/Carcass/Firebird guitarist Bill Steer as he navigates his idiosyncratic journey from grindcore to none-more-70s blues-rock. Leeds-based hairy/beardies Gentleman's Pistols are the archetypal act on the Rise Above label founded by fellow Napalm Death veteran Lee Dorrian. But whereas Firebird were – and perhaps still are – a power trio in the classic Cream mould, the four-piece GP permit Steer to stretch out with some mightily impressive twin-guitar duelling (he's the 92nd greatest heavy metal guitarist of all time according to the internet). It's always a pleasure to watch this lot completely winning over somebody else's audience, and a measure of the headliner's confidence that they're permitted to do so. Shame they still get only half an hour, though.

"We're a band called The Answer from County Down, Northern Ireland, and our business with you tonight is rock and roll!" Cormac Neeson talks like Father Ted, sings like the young Robert Plant and is now apparently pursuing an experiment in facial hair to counteract the impression that his band still look way too young to be playing this kind of stuff. After two years on the road with AC/DC, The Answer seem to be scaling back rather than trading up, downsizing to the Thekla from the Academy. That might be a problem for the bean-counters, but in truth their frill-free approach always left them looking rather lost on those larger stages. Fun-sized guitarist Paul Mahon has grown in confidence if not in stature, while Neeson continues to produce a paint-stripping roar from behind that curtain of hair. Third album, 'Revival', is more of the same rather than the great leap forward they needed, but its best songs – the thunderous 'Tornado', impossibly catchy 'Waste Your Tears', and Black Crowes gospel of 'One More Revival' – slot in comfortably alongside those crowd-pleasers the packed and enthusiastic audience have come to hear. Maybe they'll never get any further than the top of the hard rock second division, but they're no less cherishable for that. (Robin Askew)

Copyright Robin Askew 2011