‘We’ve played to five people and 500,000 people,” Shinedown’s vocalist Brent Smith yells, over a boom-boom-whack drum beat reminiscent of Queen’s We Will Rock You. “But tonight it’s all about you. Newcastle, let’s create some magic.” On his cue, almost every phone in the building is held aloft, every other arm is waving – as are drummer Barry Kerch’s sticks. When the lasers kick in, Smith’s “magic” spectacle is complete.
There’s a lot of showmanship at a Shinedown show. The lasers are rarely turned off and air is punched repeatedly. Short-haired, tattooed, 40-year-old Smith is part rock singer, part circus ringmaster, delivering monologues and commands (“Shake your neighbour’s hand”; “On the count of three, everybody jump”) during songs and between them, while the band plays on. It’s taken Smith two decades, three bands, various Shinedown lineups, six albums – and the judicious inclusion of their songs in TV programmes such as Made in Chelsea – to move the big-voiced Tennessee-born frontman from obscurity to the verge of arena status.
The show itself is huge already: the choruses, the singalongs, and the hooks which – in Get Up and Second Chance – pile on top of one another. Shinedown are certainly an odd success story in 2018. Harder than on record, their music mixes old-school rock, hair metal, pop and modern production, appealing to a large constituency of young and older rock fans. Everything is delivered at ear-shredding volume, although when the sound system struggles to cope, things tip from thrillingly brutal to physically uncomfortable.
Still, tattooed couples hug during the piano power ballads and Smith – who has come through struggles with alcohol and drugs – certainly makes a universal connection with Brilliant, a self-motivation manual set to hard rock. “Have you still got your singing voices, Newcastle?” he asks, and the extraordinary scale of the sing-song in Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Simple Man answers in the affirmative. Shinedown will inspire devotion in some and bafflement – and ringing ears – in others, but sold out, medium-sized venues like this one won’t contain them for much longer.
• At O2 Academy, Glasgow, tonight. Then touring until 7 November.
