Queens of the Stone Age @ The SSE Hydro, 16 November

Since making their modest Scottish debut at The Cathouse in 2000, through several memorable nights at the Barras and an enduring habit of returning to T in the Park that bit further up the bill every time, there's no doubt that Queens of the Stone Age have legitimately earned their way to the next plateau when they greet this expectant 13,000 capacity crowd at the country's newest (and largest) indoor venue. Any sense of occasion, though, is jeopardised by the fear that a production of this scale might diminish the raw power that got them here in the first place.

This most stable incarnation of the band (save for the recent baton passing between Joey Castillo and Dave Grohl to One Day As A Lion's Jon Theodore) tonight trades the old grit and groove (there’ll be no Avon or Mexicola here) for melancholic boogie-woogie and smartphone waving balladry (Josh Homme even tinkles the ivories for The Vampyre of Time and Memory), as Queens' setlist essentially asks fans from all eras (especially the knuckle draggers looking for a fight in the standing section) to try and move on.

Most focused on the here and now, they liberally disperse nine of ten songs from ...Like Clockwork – Homme’s uncharacteristically exposed rock opera – between direct hits and inspired reprisals from less visited corners of the catalogue; Rated R's In the Fade and Better Living Through Chemistry, for example, are repurposed as unlikely moments of slow-burning arena rock spectacle.

By contrast, If I Had a Tail’s barbed menace, alongside a satiating encore of their hedonistic clarion call (“It’s the Feel Good Hit of the Summer, in the dead of winter,” acknowledges Homme) and Song For the Dead's bludgeoning goodbye are potent reminders of a beast that knows when to bare its fangs. Just perhaps not always where. [Johnny Langlands]