Accept, Skindred, Phil Campbell and The Warning shine on Saturday at Steelhouse Festival 2024

REVIEW: Saturday at Steelhouse Festival 2024

Steelhouse Festival has always sought to promote new talent, younger bands that might not necessarily fit the usual done-to-death ‘pop-punk’ parameters. Swansea band Zac And The New Men are certainly less highly strung, swaying with surprising calm between bluesy and alternative rock. Six-stringer Oli Poole in particular has a neat line in fuzzy guitar, and while they might be a touch languid for your average rock festival, their sinewy, leftfield charm has its heart in the blues and its head in the here and now.

It's tempting to look at Brighton retro-fetishists Creeping Jean as a grown-up version of the previous act. Despite being delayed on their journey here, they display their usual savoir faire, their uniquely elegant take on retro rock offering positivity in easily absorbed waves. Songs like ‘Warm & Fuzzy’ and ‘Bandit’ are aptly warming and sunshine-filled, like a welcome morning coffee while sat under a sunshade.

James and The Cold Gun, named after the Kate Bush song of the same name, are almost the polar opposite, but no less interesting. Led by frontman James Joseph and having released an album on a label owned by Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard, this local act with international acclaim dish out unrepentant ear-hoggers, including songs like ‘Fragile’ – nuanced but with riffs as big as cave dwelling monsters. It’s the music of the downtrodden finding their collective vibe and fighting back.

It continues to be interesting to watch South of Salem’s inexorable rise. Always a committed, full frontal live act, they are certainly that today – at least as much as people who clearly favour the night can be in broad sunlight. It’s tracks like ‘Hellbound Heart’ from new album ‘Death Of The Party’ that impress the most, the band adding electronic flourishes to their solidly sinful, vampish goth-punk puzzle. More of that please.

“It’s like winter for us,” beams Dany, the extraordinary singer/guitarist from all-sister Mexican trio The Warning, a band that sells out every venue it steps into. Their very presence here, plus that of Skindred, is a pointer for where Steelhouse likes to turn – after all, rock’s a universe of rebirth and discovery, not a rutted, trodden-to-death track. When The Warning are coalescing with frankly jaw-dropping verve on such modern rock gems as ‘More’, ‘Choke’ and closer ‘Evolve’, you can almost taste its lifeblood, throbbing in the veins right here and now. Star of the show has to be drummer Paulina, swaying, tensing and twisting behind her kit, nailing every trick previously defined and adding a few of her own. She even takes lead vocals on ‘Sharks’. You could be forgiven for not realising it yet, but in a few years’ time when The Warning are holding Download in their collective palm, you’ll be telling people about the time you saw them up a big hill near Ebbw Vale.

Of more familiar flavour are Phil Campbell and The Bastard Sons. “Music is medicine, music is therapy,” sings Joel Peters at the start of ‘We’re The Bastards’, pretty much summing up why so many of us come here every year. Phil revisits Motörhead classics like ‘Going To Brazil’, the ubiquitous ‘Ace Of Spades’, plus the outfit’s appropriately raw cover of the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save The Queen’, and Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, today dedicated to Bernie Marsden. The finest rock n’ roll therapy.

Unless your first name is Judas and your last name is Priest, you are not as metal as Accept. The fabled German band is another remarkable booking, having only played something like seven UK shows in the last ten years. Your mum would certainly have some choice words if you turned up at teatime dressed like band linchpin Wolf Hoffmann, but if studs and spandex are your thing, dig in. With no fewer than three Flying Vee guitars (one played by former Whitesnake dude Joel Hoekstra), Accept nail riffs that are the absolute definition of classic metal, and their tightly orchestrated synchro stages moves would give even the Red Arrows food for thought. Like his predecessor, the professionally annoyed looking Udo Dirkschneider, frontman Mark Tornillo sings like a man with random body parts trapped in unyielding machinery, and it’s entirely right that ‘Balls To The Wall’ brings this hour of power to a ridiculously glorious, and gloriously ridiculous, conclusion.

If you’re looking for a band truly fit to preach to rock’s broad church, that band is headliners Skindred, and that minister is the unstoppable Benji Webbe. From opener ‘Set Fazers’, through the bombastic ‘Pressure’ and ‘That’s My Jam’, this is music that has a unique, near chemical effect on the crowd. Your knees and hips loosen, your arms rise and fall, your head nods. It’s metal and it’s reggae and it’s rock and it’s rap, and honestly, it doesn’t matter – we’re actually all in this together and Benji reminds us of this repeatedly. He does it brilliantly and hilariously at the same time, through his self-effacing, honest and humorous stage patter, and of course, his increasingly elaborate wardrobe.

‘Kill The Power’ brings Coventry 2 Tone and pumping rock into one cosy space, while a mostly acoustic ‘Life That’s Free’ is preceded by a typically frank Benji chat about his son’s battle with addiction. That’s before their signature brand of street-beat heat gets even more positive with the life-affirming ‘L.O.V.E (Smile Please)’ and a beautifully sung ‘If I Could’. And if we were the ones that could, we’d frankly freeze those moments and live in them for the next week at least – these are positive places to be, and Skindred bring the love, the mischief and a melting pot of good vibe. What’s more, they’ve brought it home to their South Wales stomping ground. Tidy.

Saturday at Steelhouse Festival 2024 in photos:

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• steelhouse festival
• accept
• skindred
• Motorhead
• Phil Campbell