Lordi at Sheffield Academy - 16th Feb 2009

This being my first trip to the relatively new Sheffield Academy, I was intrigued to see what it would be like and I’ve got to say it’s one of the best venues of it’s size that I’ve been in. The stage is great, there are almost no viewing obstructions from what is quite a large and wide floor area and there’s a circular bar at the back which I’ve always felt was a great idea providing the logistics of the venue would allow it. The venue is also handily located about 5 minutes from the train station too.

So, on to the band. Well, there’s not much left that can be said about Lordi that hasn’t already been said since their record-breaking Eurovision win almost 3 years ago. But suffice to say that if you haven’t seen this band at least once yet, then you really are missing out (though I’ve no idea who in their camp thought £30 for a t-shirt is justifiable – I know the pound is bad at the moment but not that bad!).

Lordi will always be more about the live show than their recorded output but as any Kiss fan will tell you (myself included), if a band can put on one hell of a show then they are more than half-way there. It’s just a shame that more people aren’t here to witness this (the academy seems about half-full tonight), possibly due to the far-more publicised Children of Bodom gig over in Manchester on the same night. Alas, it is the Bodom fans that are missing out tonight as Lordi do indeed put on one hell of a show. From the moment they walk on its GWAR meets Kiss with a touch of Alice Cooper thrown in – fake blood, monster costumes, decapitations, ticker tape and a sloth-like gimp creature that is given his five minutes of fame before running off stage (no, I’m not sure what that was about either) are just some of Lordi’s stage props and theatrics tonight – and the fans lap it up right until the end.

You could say that once the theatrics and the costumes are stripped away that Lordi don’t have a great deal of good songs and that may be true. Their albums do tend to have a few standout tracks on them surrounded by a lot of filler and tonight the response to most of the songs is fairly placid when compared to the enormous cheers that greet ‘Would You Love A Monsterman’, ‘Devil Is A Loser’, ‘Blood Red Sandman’ and, of course, ‘Hard Rock Hallelujah’, but I ask you, when the lead singer is stomping around in a monster costume with giant wings sprouting from his back, does that really matter?