Ian Astbury is annoyed. There are hurt feelings, perhaps the makings of a fight, among some fans at the lip of the stage and the Cult’s frontman isn’t having it. “This is a celebration,” he sneers. “If you can’t handle that, go sit in the OAP section, and I fuckin’ mean that.”
There is no suggestion, during the second show of a tour marking 40 years since the release of the hard rock survivors’ debut LP Dreamtime, that he and his bandmates will be joining them there any time soon. Doing without the usual trappings of such a victory lap – there are no speeches, no video montages, not even a backdrop with their name on it – they rip through a set that suggests they’d prefer to be viewed not as old stagers but as a lean, mean rock band capable of mixing it with artists half their age.
They open with In the Clouds, a relative deep cut given a brutish update by guitarist Billy Duffy, who attacks its lead with a combination of precision and filthy, gut-level distortion. It’s an approach he favours all night, turning the mid-80s funk-flecked curio Resurrection Joe into a heaving mess of noise and Spiritwalker into a stalking, propulsive rocker, while giving Love Removal Machine’s Creedence Clearwater Revival worship a steroid shot.
Astbury is equally pugilistic. He wails, spits and snarls, periodically kicking tambourines about the stage and windmilling his mic by its cable. Clad head-to-toe in black, the duo have particular fun with War, sparring over its gargantuan riff, and Sweet Soul Sister, which remains a big, dumb blast of a song. In this context, prefacing it with a pallid stool-and-acoustic version of Edie (Ciao Baby) is mystifying.
With an anniversary tour, there is the temptation to be completist and send every diehard home happy. But the Cult aren’t interested in that. Their set is a tight 90 minutes, with a couple of records glossed over entirely, and all the better for it. Why show people all that you’ve done when you can show them what you’re best at?
• At Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 24 October, then touring
