Gig review: Skindred at Venue23, Wakefield

“The reason we invited you here tonight is because we need a Wakefield crowd,” Benji Webbe informs a sardine-packed crowd crammed beneath the long rafters of the city’s foremost – and indeed, frequently reinvented – music destination Venue23. Sweat drips from the rafters of its walls as much as it does from the forehead of the 58-year-old Skindred frontman, hair streaked with grey beneath the spotlights. He grins with delight. “Who wants to audition for the choir?”

It’s rare to see the city and the Five Towns welcome many acts purely beyond tribute acts and the heritage circuit, which explains the rapid sell-out for this show. Webbe and his bandmates are here amid a run through provincial locales typically off the beaten musical track, knowingly tagged as The Detour. Hailing as they do from Newport, the Welsh ragga-metallers may know the sense of satellite status to a major destination as well as any other act to cross the borders this year.

Nevertheless, on a Sunday night where the autumn weather holds off from the heavens, Webbe and company prove themselves worth the trip out of the way. Comfortably among the heavier genre’s foremost party-starters, Skindred have long established their credentials as midday festival favourites; seen up close and personal, it offers both chemical intoxication and shrewd respect for the calculated graft they muster.

Nominally still touring behind last year’s Smile – a surprise number-two record, further proof of their staying power – the end result is more broadly retrospective. Beyond the skittish swagger of opener Set Fazers and an encore that rifles through the sub-industrial grooves behind Gimme That Boom, Webbe mostly leads them through a back catalogue romp that veers from Rat Race and its delightfully chopped rhythms to Kill the Power, underpinned by sly video-game-aesthetic bombast.

Varied interpolations rear their head throughout the night with school-disco-cum-wedding-bash cheesy glee; Back in Black’s idiosyncratic melody rears its head amid Pressure, while the kitsch synth blast that heralds Van Halen’s Jump is practically received like holy scripture.

There may be the case to be made that Skindred no longer need such lucky-dip selections, driven purely by Webbe’s energy. But then, as a climactic Warning conjures up a Newport Helicopter to finish, it may be churlish to deny them when it comes baked-in as part of the fun.

“We’ll see you!” comes the cry as the frontman escapes into the night. Until then, they have left a memory to remember.