Rising from the ashes of Creed in 2004, Alter Bridge have the somewhat bizarre distinction of being an arena band who don’t like arenas and have also never had what you might call a hit to their name. They have won numerous awards over the last 22 years both as a band and individually, somewhat unusually kept the same original lineup, sold millions of albums, and are highly acclaimed as a live act by pretty much all who encounter them. Yet despite all this they are not a household name outside the rock scene, despite their fairly radio-friendly sound they rarely get played on the radio. What gives? Let’s have a deep dive into the gig and find out.

Your starter for 10 tonight is Sevendust. From roots in the post-grunge of the 90s they have kept their sound to a fairly basic premise – make it loud, make it heavy but don’t forget to keep the melody. This has served them well through nearly 30 years and 14 albums, although being first up tonight they only have time to feature songs from four of them plus a new one from their forthcoming release ‘One’. The sound is typical of their era, think in terms of Linkin Park or even Korn in places. The tunes are catchy and although they don’t create a pit there’s an awful lot of bobbing and arm-waving going on in the crowd. The sound is rich and dense, with three guitars making a wonderful racket and frontman Lajon doing his utmost to keep the pace moving and the crowd engaged. Basically they are angry young men who grew up and are now just mildly pissed off, but can still assemble the rage when they need it.

Next up is a TV star. Kind of. No really. Chris Daughtry was a finalist on American Idol in 2006. Chris came 4th in the competition, used it as a springboard to launch his self-titled band, and has basically never looked back. While the 3 artists who beat him have essentially never been heard of again, Daughtry have released six albums that have sold by the squillion and essentially not stopped touring the world since 2007 apart from the odd hiatus for Chris to try his hand at acting or producing comic books.

There have been several line-up changes throughout the years but the music has remained the same – powerful, brooding post-grunge stuffed with emotional lyrics and the odd flash of power pop here and there to stop you getting bored. Tonight’s set is drawn from the whole back catalogue and is an intense slice of the dark side of melodic rock. Spirits are lifted by a rather cracking cover of Journey’s ‘Separate Ways’ which keeps all the original melody and harmony whilst incorporating a hell of a power-metal punch that poor old Neil Schon probably has nightmares about.

The sound is clear and concise, and in places sounds like it could almost be lifted from Nickelback but we don’t hold that against them! Despite being support they have a dark-stage moment at the end so they can come back on for an “encore” and final song ‘Artificial’ takes us to the edge of 00s emo territory with its big riffs and intense lyrics. Superb!

Finally the stage is cleared, the big-screen backdrop is visible and Alter Bridge present themselves for our delight and delectation. Not for this band a complicated stage setup, the space between drummer and frontman is surprisingly bare and you have to wonder why they have stuck the poor bloke in a glass box over there at the back. Anyhow, frontman Myles Kennedy is in fine form right from the off and the night begins with ‘Silent Divide’ from their recently released self-titled opus and then we skip back 13 years to 2013 with ‘Addicted To Pain’. The compare and contrast doesn’t really score well on the contrast aspect as both songs are stuffed full of great guitars and soaring vocals with a rhythm that picks your feet up and makes you want to jig about a bit. It’s quite a slick and polished sound, but the solos from Marc Tremonti add just a frisson of danger and a rawness that stops things becoming too safe.

The title track from the album “Fortress” takes us in a surprising direction though, when it goes into an instrumental break that would be worthy of any NWOBHM band that you might care to mention. For a band that came 20 years after that particular genre and from thousands of miles away from it this is a pleasing interlude indeed. Any band that sounds a bit like UFO gets my vote. Myles doesn’t hog all the vocals though, and when Marc takes over on ‘Burn It Down’ it’s a refreshing step away from the ordinary that stops things getting stale. The first single they ever released, ‘Open Your Eyes’, turns out to be a singalong with some marvellous harmonies, and the crowd joins in with the woah-oh bits with gusto. Everyone likes a woah-oh chorus, right? There’s a definite whiff of Creed about it (the band that Tremonti, drummer Scott Marshall and bassist Brian Marshall were all in prior to forming Alter Bridge).

The band disappears for a moment as Myles takes centre stage with his acoustic guitar. He gives us a moving start to power ballad supreme ‘Watch Over You’ and the arena lights up like a Christmas tree as ten thousand mobiles wave in time to the music and the crowd sing the chorus like total pros. The mellow mood is only fleeting though, and we’re soon back to the hard n’ heavy sound. So much so that the tiniest of circle pits forms in the centre of the floor. There might only be ten or so people involved but they whirl and spin like dervishes, taking up the beat and running with it. A single crowd surfer seems to be too much though, and Myles is soon back in control getting a co-ordinated roar and a bit of a Mexican wave going, and then there’s a bit of jumping to be done too.

The main set ends but the obligatory one more song shouts soon sees them coming back for what turns out to actually be two more songs. As they go into ‘Blackbird’ followed by ‘Isolation’ it becomes apparent that Myles Kennedy is somewhat unusual as a frontman as his voice actually gets better the longer the night goes on. So there we go. A solid set of perfectly procured rock songs to keep us warm inside as we stream out into the cold night.