Words by: Robert Sutton
Images by: Robert Sutton Photography
www.facebook.com/robertsuttonphotography
The band was finishing off their European leg of their current tour in the UK, before heading back to the States. They played four arena dates here, with the last one being at The SSE Arena Wembley on the 15th October.
Support for the evening was from ‘Buckcherry‘ and ‘Bowling For Soup‘.
Steel Panther: For those who don’t know, Steel Panther are from Los Angeles and were formed back in 2000. They comprise of Michael Starr ( vocals) ,Satchel ( guitar), Lexxi Fox ( bass) and Stix Zadinia ( drums). They play what I can only describe as profane comedic/glam metal/hair metal and to me are very reminiscent of the band Spinal Tap.
Clad in their spandex trousers that in the case of Lexxi and Satchel matched the color of their guitars!, they opened up their set with ‘Eyes of a Panther’ from their debut album ‘Feel The Steel’. They then followed this with ‘Just Like Tiger Woods’ from their 2011 ‘Balls Out’ album.
But it wasn’t too far into their set when they declared it was ‘booby time’ and on this cue several ‘ladies’ of the crowd got on the shoulders of their partners and removed their tops…definitely not one of that PC sort of things for today’s age, but hey, if they want to do it, then I have no issue with that…
The guitar solo performed by ‘Satch’ followed on from ‘Let Me Cum In’ and with a mix of him playing his guitar and also playing the drums, it did make it a quite different to the normal guitar solo, that I think actually worked and prevented me, for one, from heading straight to the bar as if it had been a ‘normal’ solo!!..
Just before they played ’17 Girls in A Row’ they invited some girls from the audience up onto the stage to join in and dance around the stage whilst they played the song and at this point I did expect that some of them would again take their tops off, but they were all quite well behaved and just danced around…not really too sure what the point of this was and for me didn’t really do anything to enhance the performance of the song…
Following on from ‘It Won’t Suck itself’ they played the next song acoustically, which musically wise, was quite a good performance of the song ‘She’s On the Rag’ , with Lexxi on the ‘shaker’ and Stix, not at the back on the drums, but at the front of the stage playing flute using an iPhone app…
They finished their standard set with ‘Death to All but Metal’ from the ‘Feel the Steel’ album before saying their good nights and leaving the stage.
They did come back for their encore , after what seemed like way too long a time..and finished the night off with an encore comprising of ‘Fat Girl’ and ‘Party all Day’ They then let off one of the longest timed outputs of paper confetti into the audience that I have seen, just about covering the front half of the standing crowd.
For me it was a performance a bit lacking in any real substance and could really have perhaps done with a few more special effects??..Just an OK performance from them for me with no really memorable parts to take away from the night .
Setlist:-
1: Eyes of a Panther
2: Just Like Tiger Woods
3: Party Like Tomorrow is the End of the World
4: Asian Hooker
5: Turn out the Lights
6: Let Me Cum In
7: It won’t Suck Itself
8: She’s on the Rag
9: Girl from Oklahoma
10: 17 Girls in a Row
11: Gloryhole
12: Community Property
13: Death to all but Metal
Encore:
14: Fat Girl ( Thar she blows)
15: Party all Day ( Fuck all Night)
http://www.steelpantherrocks.com/
www.facebook.com/robertsuttonphotography
About Author
