STEEL PANTHER, Shepherd’s Bush Empire – Evening Standard, 23 Jan 2018

In this time of Time’s Up and #MeToo, the day after the latest Women’s March, there surely couldn’t be a worse moment to be a sexist hair metal band with songs including 17 Girls in a Row, Asian Hooker and Stripper Girl.

Yet Steel Panther, a former covers band on LA’s Sunset Strip, are doing great, playing one show here before a bigger one at the Hammersmith Apollo in a few days. They seem able to get away with it because they’re a parody act, all hairbands and spandex, dreaming of the days of Motley Crue and Whitesnake, before Nirvana ruined things for the more ridiculous heavy rock bands by actually being good.

“A lot of people are calling our singer the Harvey Weinstein of rock and roll,” said guitarist and bandleader Satchel as a joke, so they’ve clearly been watching the news. It didn’t prevent frontman Michael Starr from instigating a stage invasion of willing women in underwear by shouting, “Bring the titties to the stage!”

The joke seemed to be that they all look ancient, apart from weirdly plastic, ever-pouting bassist Lexxi Foxx, so couldn’t possibly be engaging in all the intercourse that they claim. There were funnier moments from Foxx, who said he had killed 20 peacocks to make the evening’s trousers, and Hodor-like drummer Stix Zadinia, but amid the onslaught of gynaecological lyrics it was generally hard to detect the irony. After four albums, time’s up for this tired bunch.

 

Jan 26, Eventim Apollo, W6 (0844 249 1000, eventimapollo.com)