The Black Country travelled north as rock supergroup Black Country Communion ended their first proper UK tour with a triumphant performance in Manchester.

A packed Manchester Academy witnessed a band which has already grown in stature since its debut concert at Wolverhampton Civic Hall last December.

Click on the image to the right for the concert photo gallery

“Voice of Rock” Glenn Hughes – the Cannock-born ex-member of Trapeze, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath – led from the front, turning in a breathtaking performance alongside Dudley-born drummer Jason Bonham – son of Led Zeppelin legend John – American guitar supremo Joe Bonamassa and keyboard player Derek Sherinian.

Tighter as a unit, more cohesive as a group, Saturday’s show was a whole level up from their rapturously received Wolverhampton debut, helped largely by the extra breadth the material from their new album, 2, gives them.

“We are BCC and we play rock and roll for rock and roll fans,” Hughes told the crowd, on the last night of a tour which concentrated on the north of England, Wales and Scotland.

And he wasn’t kidding as the group thundered through soon to be heavy rock classics, including Black Country, The Outsider – featuring Sherinian and Bonamassa’s totally ‘Purple’ keyboard and guitar break  - and the monumental Zeppelin-flavoured Save Me.

Bonamassa shone in the vocal spotlight too on the pairing of The Battle For Hadrian’s Wall and a truly epic Song Of Yesterday, once again staking his claim to be the guitar hero of the moment.

Similarly to at the High Voltage festival the previous weekend, BCC threw in a couple of covers from and Bonamassa’s and Hughes’ past, in a new rocked-up arrangement of Joe’s The Ballad Of John Henry and the classic riff-driven Deep Purple favourite Burn.

The AC/DC and Who-flavoured Sista Jane had fans punching the air as well, acknowledging most emphatically its debt to The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again by breaking into that very song for a few bars at the end. Sherinian had his moment in the spotlight with a gripping keyboard solo.

Glenn Hughes and Black Country Communion are clearly on a roll. There’s a BCC concert DVD to be released later in the year as well as the paperback version of Hughes’ astonishing autobiography due out in October, plus other as-yet-to-be announced plans.

The fans, of course, just want to know when BCC 3 will be out, when the next tour is and  . . . when Black Country Communion are coming back “home” to the Civic. Watch this space.

Concert review by Ian Harvey

Black Country Communion setlist:

Black Country
One Last Soul
Crossfire
The Battle For Hadrian’s Wall
Song Of Yesterday
Let Me See Your Spirit
Save Me
Cold
The Ballad Of John Henry
The Outsider
The Great Divide
Sista Jane
—
Man In The Middle
Burn

Music photography by Ian Harvey / RocktasticPix