Review | Skindred at Portsmouth Guildhall: All Thriller, no filler as Benji and co embrace Halloween

Benji Webbe of Skindred at Portsmouth Guildhall for The Night of The Living 'Dred on October 31, 2024. Picture by Scott Chalmers Photography

It’s Halloween, so of course Skindred are going to lean into this.

As a result the Portsmouth stop on their Smile Again tour has been dubbed ‘Night of The Living 'Dred’ with fancy dress encouraged. The crowd is peppered with all kinds of blood-drenched freaks, pirates and goodness knows what.

Frontman Benji Webbe bounds out dressed as a zombie Michael Jackson from the Thriller video, while hirsute guitarist Mike Demus goes ‘full nun’, as they charge into the face-melting recent single Set Fazers.

The band’s genre-splicing ragga-metal sound has been perfected over the course of eight albums, with last year’s Smile only missing out on topping the charts by a handful of copies.

Mikey Demus of Skindred at Portsmouth Guildhall on October 31, 2024. Picture by Scott Chalmers Photography

It’s therefore not surprising that the set draws heavily on Smile, but there are gems from throughout their career such as Rat Race, Kill The Power and That’s My Jam.

There’s a reason these guys have won several ‘best live act’ awards – they know how to entertain. Webbe has the audience in his palm, there are plenty of local references and shaggy dog stories beside the frequent shout-outs to their native Newport, Wales. And that’s before we even get to the audience participation.

However, midset one witless wag rather confusingly shouts out: “Play something we know”, which is instantly shut down by Webbe with: “Start your own f-ing band then!” to huge cheers.

They litter the set with snippets of covers, a bit of Thriller here (naturally), a bit of Van Halen's Jump and House of Pain’s Jump Around there, even the first verse of Wonderwall which is rudely dismissed by Benji.

'Nobody Does it Better' - Benji Webbe of Skindred with Roger Moore's James Bond at Portsmouth Guildhall. Picture by Scott Chalmers Photography

But it's only in the encores that we get a full cover – a throbbing version of Eddy Grant's Electric Avenue.

They finish with former single Warning, from 2014’s Union Black, and as is tradition, Webbe leads the crowd in the ‘Newport helicopter’ – the swirling of audience-members’ shirts above their heads – creating quite the maelstrom.

As the band leave the stage, Carly Simon's Bond theme Nobody Does It Better comes over the PA (a picture of Roger Moore as 007 adorns the drum head).

For lesser bands it would be hubris.

For Skindred it's simply a statement of fact about another very successful day at the office.