Guns N' Roses @ SECC, 21 Jul

Bullet For My Valentine (**) have been a star steadily on the rise around planet metal's stratosphere for the last couple of years. With thick chugga-chugga riffs and immaculately straightened hair, tonight the Welsh quartet lay down a frenzied attempt at stadium baiting Maiden stylistics, albeit fashionably done with emo posturing. Although they've got gusto by the shed load, cracks emerge when their singles cheapen the rest of their back catalogue by appearing too far detached to convince that these odd forays geared towards the charts are anything more than contrived cash generators travelling incognito. Despite the crowd rousing and a few blink-and-you'll-miss-it bars of nicely channelled fret board aggression, they don't quite reach the dizzy heights they so hungrily aspire to. "Are you ready for Guns and Fucking Roses, Glasgow?" vocalist Matt Tuck quizzes. Is that a trick question? Yes sir, if even out of sheer morbid curiosity, indeed we are.

Throughout two hours of crowd restlessness and trademarked frontman tardiness, a crash course in various defining moments in music since Guns' grandest Houdini act in 1993 (Pearl Jam, Oasis, Rage Against The Machine) blares over the PA before the iconic W. Axl Rose descends on a stage laden with pyrotechnic paraphernalia. It's no secret that he's almost reconstructed this band from scratch (bar the inclusion of keyboardist Dizzy Reid and an encore cameo by former fulltime axe man Izzy Stradlin) and although Slash and Duff may be irreplaceable, the sound is well versed and note perfect - lest we forget that the current incarnation have now lived with these songs for almost as long as the original Gn'R had been playing them.

Welcome to the Jungle instantly sells the house to something so much stronger than a belated nostalgia trip and it'll take more than cheesy background videos of drag race crashes to repress the undeniable might of Nightrain or You Could Be Mine. As Axl momentarily stops changing shirts and sprinting laps around the stage to float his arm across his skyline of fans - the jaded, the committed, the old and the new, screeching out a familiar "nyanna-nyanna-nyanna-nyeeeeeeeaaawwh", it's a serving of inimitable crowd controlling prowess which recalls the very fact that, when it's all said and done, this crazy recluse has written some outstanding songs amid the pantomimic chaos of his career. "Ready to crash and burn, I never learn" he reminds us - would you really want it any other way? [Dave Kerr]