On a mild October evening Boy Child and I boarded the train to Glasgow. Weaving out way through some of the city’s football fans, we made our way to the legendary Barrowlands Ballroom for the evening’s entertainment.

So, who were we off to see?

Skindred!

Much as I’ve grown to love Barrowlands over the years, it is a bit of a fight through the tide of fans coming in when you’ve gone to the merch stall and are then trying to get up to the ballroom. While I’d queued for merch, Boy Child had headed upstairs to snag a spot. Boy done good and we were only a row or two off the rail.

There were two support acts for the evening. First out on stage just after 7.30pm were North Atlas. We’d seen these guys once before briefly in G2 a couple of years ago when their set was blighted with technical gremlins, so I was delighted to give these guys a fair second chance. Accompanied by two bizarre wicker pagan gods (?) and an extremely acrobatic masked pagan, these guys delivered a solid 30 min opening set to the growing crowd. Their latest single Dead Tree is out now. Give them a listen. They’d make a great support act for Biffy Clyro!

The second act of the night were Nottingham’s As December Falls. I’d heard of them but had never hear them before and to be honest I won’t rush to listen to them again. It’s simply not my taste – think Arctic Monkeys and Paramore meets Glee or High School Musical. The crowd seemed to enjoy them, but I’ll pass thanks.

By 9.30pm the capacity crowd were fired up and ready to welcome Skindred to the stage. Thunderstruck playing signalled the band’s imminent arrival on stage. What the crowd hadn’t expected was the Imperial March from Star Wars on the bagpipes. As guitarist Mikey Demus walked out playing pretend pipes, the fans went wild. There was a mad scramble to grab them as he tossed them into the room as the band opened their ninety-minute set with Set Fazers.

Frontman Benji Webbe resplendent in a long black mock-croc coat was greeted with thunderous cheers. He truly is one of the most charismatic frontmen around.

With a Skindred show you know what you’re going to get… a great night of reggae metal with a smattering of cheeky comments. A Skindred show is perhaps not for the faint-hearted.

Temperature on the room were rising rapidly as Skindred treated the fans to a well-balanced set from their current album Smile and their back catalogue. It was a lively crowd which always helps as the band feed off the energy. The mosh pit was open pretty much all night.

Amid wardrobe tweaks aplenty, Benji makes the crowd work for him, encouraging fists in the air for the mighty Kill the Power, singalong choruses and peace signs too. This show is all about having a good time but also about looking out for one another, with the fans in the pit being instructed from the stage to pick up anyone who fell.

Benji Webbe knows how to work a crowd, even throwing in fan pleasing 500 Miles from The Proclaimers with a “ragga metal” vibe.

There was one cover song, Eddy Grant’s Electric Avenue amidst all the fan favourites. It’s nigh on impossible to call out the high points. The set was a high energy high point from start to finish.

It wouldn’t be a Skindred show if it wasn’t brought to a climax with Warning and the obligatory “Newport helicopter”.

Smile may be the current album title but almost two thousand hot and sweaty fans made their way down the venue’s iconic stairs with smiles on their faces.

Job well done, guys. Hurry back.