Gig review: Clubland Live at First Direct Bank Arena, Leeds

“You guys are having a good night, right?” Cascada frontwoman Natalie Horler bellows, platinum-blonde hair fanned out like a luminescent halo. Beneath the retina-searing display of pride-strobe hues and with a rotating cast of leather-clad dancers working the stage like catwalk models, the singer appears purely in her kinetic element. “Let’s make it even better,” she adds with a wink.

Nobody could suggest that the Bonn-formed Eurodance veterans have not gone the memo, as one of the prime names upon this year’s Clubland Live tour. An arena-scene fixture for close to 20 years now, the British-based brand have carved out a successful niche in the nostalgia market with their seasonal rave-up runs across the nation’s enormo-domes, sticking diligently to a shrewd recipe; three-plus hours of B2B sets, calibrated for the maximum endorphin rush.

This new jaunt, co-headlined by Cascada, trance jockey Ben Nicky and former Force & Styles multi-hyphenate Darren Styles, delivers exactly what it promises on the tin at the First Direct Bank Arena, aided by a few sly touches to help grease the wheels.

Effectively a monster house party that spans pre-and-post-millennial generations, its roll-call sheet ranges from veteran DJ combos – early-noughts favourites LMC, and their bombastic U2-Whitney Houston mashup Take Me to the Clouds Above – to techno-classic vocalists – ex-N-Trance vocalist Kelly Llorenna, whose ripping delivery on the stormy breakbeat of Set You Free proves the de-facto high of a busy opening half.

There is a whiff of hen-night hedonism in play that sometimes overwhelms, of course; Ultrabeat and Flip & FIll may parade a pleather-drenched blowout powered by confetti and steam jets, but they don’t always manage to hold the crowd beyond flashes of sped-up eighties cover versions and an authentic singalong to the Oasis classic Don’t Look Back in Anger.

Bill-closer Nicky comes up against the time crunch too, with his robust finale soundtracking a steady stream of patrons making their ways towards the door.

But this is still a broadly entertaining evening, best encapsulated when Cascada rattle through their collection of mid-noughties chart anthems, ranging from the giddy Evacuate the Dancefloor to the sub-hi-NRG remix flavours of Everytime We Touch. “Let this be one to remember!” Horler cries. Plenty surely will.