Gig review: Hollywood Vampires at The Piece Hall – Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, and Joe Perry in Halifax

“Halifax!” Alice Cooper intones with a wide sweep of his gloved hand, mic held flush against a white ruffled shirt. Nestled on-stage between Joe Perry’s chrome-tinged barnet and Johnny Depp’s jumble-shop jangle, The Godfather of Shock Rock could be one sartorial step out of line with the rest at The Piece Hall - but nobody here is doubting who the ringmaster is as he calls for a celebration of his “dead, drunk friends” with a fist raised to the August skies.

For a supergroup convened a decade-and-a-half ago as something of an apparent boys-own side-quest adventure, the Hollywood Vampires have long outlived - and indeed outstripped - expectations of shelf-life mortality. Effectively a quasi-tribute act to the departed members of their frontman’s onetime drinking club, their appeal has always been rooted in a double-dose of rock-and-roll fantasy; famous faces covering famous songs, supergroup bar-band signage cast in ten-foot-tall letters.

Three years on from their last jaunt, those merits are on full display as they wrap up a major summer-season run of arena dates and outdoor shows in Calderdale, sun-kissed rays hung low across its most famed courtyard. If the dry-ice pantomime of the band’s back projections get lost amid the final embers of daylight, their sound certainly does not; emerging to I Want My Now’s hair-metal swagger, Cooper and company proceed to serve up a steady banquet of thick-cut six-string steaks, paying their respects to The Velvet Underground, Jeff Beck and The Doors over a near-two-hour showcase of swaggering guitars and louche singalongs.

Self-catalogue staples make themselves known, of course - I’m Eighteen captures its share of beery cheers early on, while Perry surely knows his way through Aerosmith favourite Livin’ On the Edge in his sleep by now. Depp, building towards a cinematic resurgence this winter, meanwhile wraps his gravelled tones around David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ to more than just a few screams down at the front barrier.

Cooper remains master of ceremonies, clearly revelling in an evening of kitsch couture that does not end with him beheaded by a comically oversized guillotine. By the time Highway to Hell, Walk This Way and School’s Out are dispatched in a copper-bottomed closing salvo, the seventy-eight-year-old’s grin practically splits his face as he plays a mock-golf swing with his cane. “Playing the part of Alice Cooper, it’s me!” he cries. This earnest retrospective lives on thanks to one of its great survivors.