The Town Hall was still echoing with the sounds of nu-metallers Linkin Park when Pantera rumbled through on their Real Steel Pacific Rim tour.
The foursome from the redneck Deep South haven't had to change their musical formula much since they crash-landed on the heavy metal scene in 1990with their Cowboys from Hell album.
And a sold-out crowd of metal-hungry teenagers through to jaded middle-aged rockers were given a lengthy reacquaintance with the Pantera back catalogue on Wednesday night.
From classics Primal Concrete Sledge and Floods, to out-takes from their last studio effort, the mediocre Reinventing the Steel, Pantera's ability to do early Metallica better than Metallica themselves, and Dimebag Darrell's crunching guitars, propelled an annoyingly stop-start gig.
Always the showman, it was bourbon-soaked lead singer Phil Anselmo who provided the bulk of the night's entertainment. Unhappy with the level of interaction from the audience, he stopped the band several times mid-song to instruct the crowd to scream louder and move around more.
He seemed happy only when a lanky fan had hurled himself from a balcony on to the stage.
A pleasant surprise, and some of the best performances of the night, came towards the end of the set when the hairy foursome launched into a series of covers - an ode to their heavy metal heroes such as Judas Priest, Black Sabbath and Van Halen.
