Thin Lizzy

For a band with a combined age of over three centuries, Dublin classic rockers Thin Lizzy attracted a younger crowd than expected. Maybe this was due to last year’s Download festival set, perhaps younger cult favourites Clutch, supporting, who put in a typically raucous performance. Neil Fallon’s Baltimore men always sounded like the soundtrack to a bar-room brawl (the band provide songs for TV’s Sons of Anarchy), and as such, they filled the Dome with trademark bass-heavy riffs and blues/funk swagger. With their backward-looking sound, Clutch was ideal warm-up for the headliners’ similarly riff-friendly antics.

With the fashion for flamboyant hair-metal and posturing cock-rock, Lizzy’s current incarnation fit neatly into Iron Maiden’s niche. With stupendous lighting and familiar choreography, the duelling guitars of Whitesnake’s Marco Mendoza and Alice Cooper’s band-member Damon Johnson stood alongside the uncannily Phil Lynott-esque vocals of The Almighty frontman Ricky Warwick on classics ‘Whiskey In The Jar’, ‘Jailbreak’ and, of course, ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’.

Tellingly, founder member/drummer Brian Downey and guitarist Scott Gorham, who had been bandmates for decades, took a back seat, leaving that eighties sound to dominate. This would have been fine were this not a band with more to them than the admittedly entertaining OTT rock-out.

A tribute to late countryman-turned Hove resident and former band-mate Gary Moore evoked memories of their best, more glam-pop seventies fare, which was sadly lacking. This left a gig of nearly two hours sounding slightly samey and a good show not quite great.

Brighton Dome Concert Hall, 3 February 2012

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