With former Gillan members Bernie Torme and John McCoy due to perform here with their outfit GMT, alongside headliners Girlschool, tonight promised to be a great night of early 80's British metal. Sadly GMT pulled out of the gig at the last minute, leaving Girlschool the job of thrilling the old school metal fans present, and thrill us they most definitely did.

With the ladies still plugging last year's 30^th anniversary reworking of their classic 'Hit And Run' album, the emphasis of the set was on material from said album as well as a fair slice of their 'Demolition' debut, plus a smattering of more recent material. Indeed, Girlschool hit the ground running tonight with 'Demolition Boys', 'C'mon Let's Go' and 'Not for Sale' opening the set in glorious style. In fact it struck me just how many great songs this band have in their cannon as they reel off corkers like 'The Hunter', 'Hit And Run', 'Yeah Right' and 'Screaming Blue Murder' to a rapturous response. I was particularly pleased to get two of my 'Hit And Run' faves back to back in the shape of the Motorhead-esque 'Kick It Down' and 'Watch Your Step' - perhaps not two of Girlschool's most famous tracks, but for me, absolute belters.

More recent tracks 'I Spy' and 'Never Say Never' illustrate that the girls can still pen a decent tune, and set closers 'Race With The Devil' and 'Emergency' crank things up another notch entirely. They return triumphantly to the stage for a killer encore of first single 'Take It All Away', complete with audience sing along, leaving just enough time for their take on the ZZ Top classic 'Tush'.

Even after all these years, one of the things that strikes you about Girlschool is that they still do it with huge smiles on their faces, they're clearly enjoying themselves up there, and this translates to the audience themselves who all left with huge smiles on their faces too.

This was a great night of classic British Heavy Metal, Girlschool style.