I had been looking forward to this for weeks and weeks – as had half of Glasgow, it seemed - and wasn’t it worth it! What a fantastic night out! 

Turisas, the “support” band, were new to me, but they had a big following in the audience: an awful lot of them were there for Turisas rather than Lordi, and were wearing Turisas “Battle Metal” t-shirts, (in many cases with black pvc kilts). Turisas play Epic Viking Metal (their own description). If you crossed Italian Power Metalers Rhapsody with a folk band, and then dropped their bastard child into a death metal band, it would be sort of Turisas, only without Rhapsody’s bazillion–piece backing orchestra and matching choir.  

They were fabulous. Lots of fur and leather and naked oiled torsos: the frontman was himself fronted by an attractive furry codpiece. They had swords to brandish, and posed quite shamelessly! And surprisingly to me, their line-up included a violin, (fair enough) and a piano accordion (!!) which looked very astonishing indeed with the whole Viking warrior thing, but sounded great.  

They slipped back and forth between death vocals and folk without a blush, and they pressed all the Scottish buttons by weaving in snatches of traditional Scots folk and dance music. They had the huge audience positively baying with delight. I would have worried about my English accent if the sound level had been lower! 

Instead of a traditional guitar solo, they went for a violin solo, which was very well received, as was the stripping to reveal St Andrews cross underpants!  

They were so good I was slightly worried for Lordi ... 

Well, Lordi had a great set, with a castle wall with turrets and big double gates, and a blasted heath behind it. They came out in a cloud of smoke and a tremendous roar of “Bringing the Balls Back to Rock”, followed immediately by “Time to Get Heavy”, Lordi himself entering spectacularly through the castle gates. Glasgow roared its approval right back, and we were all singing from the first bars. 

Now comes the “but”. How they began (good and loud and infectious and vigorous) was how they continued, and how they finished. No build ups, no real peaks, no variety. I feel mean but there it is: all through, it felt as though it was starting to go somewhere, then settled for staying where it was.  

For “Biomechanic Man” Lordi, entering (again) through the double gates, had adjusted his costume to the extent that he had a little red light on each knee. Huh? That was it. I just felt I wanted more than that. 

Half way through, we were plunged into darkness, and a sepulchral voice intoned that now monsters were taking over the show, and all would be…monstrous. It sounded promising. Lights came up, more smoke ensued, Lordi entered through the double gates (again), and the rest of them bounded on, and things continued exactly as before, quite monstrous, but no extra monstrosity. Am I being greedy here? I was promised extra monstrosity, and I wanted some.  

They had lots of pyrotechnics, but they were not properly integrated into the show: they had flashes and bangs just because they could, rather than to enhance: often they were not well synchronised with the music, either. Lordi had a double-headed battle axe that had fireworks coming out of the top of each blade at one point. Why? Awa had a parasol that she spun and it did a mild Catherine wheel impression. Again, why? It was not part of anything. 

The bucket of bones – I expected them to be thrown into the audience, at the least, but no. Lordi carried the bucket about a bit, then put it down carefully, and later it was taken away. The circular saw: what can I say, except that it was a terrible disappointment. 

The whole thing felt very episodic. It was a collection of separate songs, not one complete performance. The annoying thing was, they had all the ingredients, they had just not used them properly, as if it was an early trial run-through, and the detail was going to be fixed later. 

I was maybe alone in my box of “but”s. The audience had a good old sing-along (so did I) and loved it. The explosions and flamethrowers made us all squeal like girls, the final pre-encore song, “The Devil is a Looser” was screamed out by us all with near hysterical enthusiasm: they came back on to give us “Would You Love a Monsterman” and the Academy nearly took off. (OK, when I said no real peaks I mean apart from these). They then came back again to sing “Hard Rock Hallelujah” and we screamed along till we were hoarse. Truly, it was a great experience, and I would go to see them again like a shot. But they need to tighten up the act.

*A big thanks goes out to our special guest reviewer Becky Goodchild for this review.