Live Review : Lordi + All For Metal + Crimson Veil @ Academy 2, Manchester on April 1st 2024

Metal’s inexplicable love affair with Eurovision seems to be baked into our psyche. In recent years many “big” names from our world (The Rasmus, Blind Channel, Voyager and Lords of the Lost) have taken part and even bigger names (Avantasia and Keep of Kaslin) have unsuccessfully tried to be selected for their respective home nations. This is alongside the fact that every Baltic state entry seems to sound like Evanescence and Italian alt-rockers Maneskin triumphed in 2021 with a ditty that sounded all the world like a shunt job between Rage Against The Machine and Jane's addiction.

However, it has not always been the case and we only have to go back a couple of decades to find metal’s first incursions into the contest. Norwegian glam proponents Wig Wam made a splash in 2005, but it was the following year that metal finally arrived at Eurovision. Held in Athens a bunch of prosthetics-adorned Finns took on all comers and ruled the roost with a record points tally. Lordi gave the contest a theatrical wedgy that is never quite recovered from.

But whilst most Eurovision winners eke out their remaining days dining off their 15 minutes of fame (one bunch of notable Swedes accepted), Lordi had a career before ‘Hard Rock hallelujah’, and have continued to have one long after. The palpable excitement to be felt in the hall and ludicrously long lines for Merch illustrate that Lordi is still very much a big deal for lovers of costumed shock rock, above and very much beyond that one night in Greece eighteen years ago.

Openers Crimson Veil are bathed in a fitting soft red glow. They hail from Brighton and provide a rather cinematic and ethereal take on progressive metal. The use of a myriad of stringed instruments as opposed to a communal garden bass gives their sound a haunting quality and you get the impression of being absorbed into a wisp of otherworldly sounds. Their time on stage is disappointingly fleeting and the whole set has an air of a ghostly apparition that you are not sure actually happened.

If Crimson Veil felt slight and waiflike then All for Metal are the complete antithesis. It is obvious that they are here because there are so bloody many of them. They spill off the claustrophobic confines of Academy 2’s stage into the photo pit and beyond. This is bombastic power metal at its pompous best, fronted by He-man. They take the best of Manowar and sprinkle it with stardust and irony. It is clear to see that the infinite members of the band are doing this with their collective tongues shoved very firmly in their collective cheeks. 

There are no metal clichés left, All for Metal has purloined them all and forged them into the celebration of grandiosity that we see before us. We get hammers, we get swords, we get songs about Valhalla, we get songs about how metal will triumph over all, and we get more bare flesh than a Turkish bath. It's all blatantly ridiculous but it is captivatingly wonderful in that ridiculousness. Metal was never meant to be poe-faced and over-serious. It’s a genre of grand escapism and this is entertainment at its most ludicrous. Stupendously brilliant.

Lordi have brought a lot of staging, in fact there is very little room left for them on the boards of Academy 2. The space is dominated by an ominous inter-dimensional doorway that Mr Lordi uses to enter and exit the performance gantry. His get-up is so elaborate and wide (there are gargoyles on the ends of his highly impressive shoulder pads) that he wouldn't otherwise get past the drum kit and keyboard setup shoehorned Tardis like onto the rostrum.

It is immediately apparent that there is a direct lineage from Kiss and Alice Cooper to Lordi. This is in terms of both the reliance on theatrical props and appendages, but also the sheer commerciality of the material. Lordi trade in big singalong numbers with big choruses and little complexity. Even those unfamiliar with the material (Mr. Lordi calls them out as lurking at the back, waiting for that song) are more than able to pick up the refrains of each song. You're not going to while away an evening debating the meaning of Lordi tracks but that doesn't stop them from being intoxicatingly exciting.

This is a big gimmick rock show squeezed into a ludicrously small venue. Reminiscent of Kiss, every number has its very own McGuffin. ‘Scarecrow’ has a jump scare providing scarecrow, ‘Wake the Snake’ is replete with a snake and ‘Kalmageddon’ sees Mr. Lordi transformed into a white wolf. Pure theatre and immaculately executed. But there is also a huge amount of personality beneath the prosthetics. Mr. Lordi goes massively off script, beguiling us with how different it is to play to an English-language-speaking audience. He interacts with the audience in a playful manner that seems devoid of ego or rock star persona.

Even the solos, which are usually the preserve of insufferable self-indulgence, are highly enjoyable and forgivably short set pieces. Hiisi riffs on the Jurassic Park theme while taking a bite out of a long-suffering roadie, Hella plays a haunting melody after getting her head reattached and Kone out space-ace’s Ace Frehley, by levitating in his rocket boots as he noodles on the guitar.

The vast majority of the set is reaped from last year’s “Screem Writers Guild” and the just turned twenty “The Monsterican Dream”. However, the biggest dollops of adulation are reserved for their four most well-known tracks. ‘Who’s Your Daddy’ is dispensed with early doors and dedicated to the young girl resplendent on her father's shoulders for the entire duration of the show. The other three form the final furlong of the performance. ‘Devil is a Loser’ sees Mr Lordi stretch out his wings, taking up even more room on the incredibly crowded podium. ‘Would You Love a Monsterman’ is a masterclass in throwaway singalong mayhem. Utterly infantile it is a gloriously commercial romp with a chorus that would make Elton John swell with pride. And then there is only one place left to go. 

Tonight has proved beyond doubt that there is far more to Lordi than that song. But that does not stop us from wanting to hear it in all its glory. Mr. Lordi temporarily exits the stage leaving Hella to hype us up with that classic keyboard refrain before he re-emerges axe in hand. It is pure schmaltz in a three-minute gift-wrapped package. Commercial rock at his melodic best and the entire Academy two bellow along in collective bliss. A fittingly grandiose ending to an opulently lavish evening that proved beyond doubt that you don't need to go to an arena to get an arena-sized show.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
Lordi, All For Metal, Crimson Veil