Soundgarden @ O2 Apollo, Manchester, 13 September

Like guitarist Kim Thayil’s porkpie hat and electroshock ponytail combo, it’s business up front with a party at the back as Soundgarden return to the Apollo after a 17 year absence.

Tonight there’s a pronounced slickness to the Seattle quartet as they get their collective head down to a roll call of stadium-sized anthems, The Day I Tried to Live, Burden In My Hand and A Thousand Days Before are all presented with workmanlike immaculacy for the smartphone-waving hordes. 

Business time over, it takes rarely played hellraisers like Never the Machine Forever and Black Rain, the resurrected Badmotorfinger era banger that announced their return in 2010, to light the touchpaper. Thayil, momentarily shaking his game face, can’t resist pointing a wide smile toward the circle-pit as they roll out latenight 90s MTV anthem Outshined for a victory lap. 

“Feel free to come over the wall,” barks frontman Chris Cornell, inviting a flock of crowdsurfers over the security barrier and singling out anyone in the nosebleeds who might have forgotten how to go apeshit on a night like this. A swaggering turn at Rusty Cage brings it back in technicolour; the whole house is finally up on its feet. 

Sticking mainly to the roaring lower range he's discovered in his 40s, Cornell’s feral caterwaul is less regularly employed than YouTube videos from 1992 might have younger fans prepared for, but when he lets it out of the bottle for the propulsive encore of My Wave, Dusty and bulldozing fan favourite Beyond the Wheel, it's abundantly clear Soundgarden can still thrill the old way.