My Dad saw Motorhead in 1978 aged 16 and in the interests of self-preservation, enjoyed the concert from the safety of the foyer. Three decades on, Lemmy, the legendary lead singer and bassist for the band, is eligible for a bus pass and judging from those in attendance, most of their fans are well into a sedate if grizzled middle age. However, there was no evidence in the performance that the band has mellowed. They blasted away noughties’ health and safety sound regulations with ninety punishingly loud minutes of no frills heavy metal – as Lemmy growled in his introduction: “We are Motorhead, and we play rock and roll”.

The leg shaking noise of the first few songs was initially overwhelming but Lemmy’s growl soon cut through the texture, inserting nihilistic menace into ‘Metropolis’. After the opening barrage, the structure of the songs started to loosen up. The turbo charged speed metal of ‘In The Name Of Tragedy’ ended with a breathtakingly virtuosic five minute drum solo from Mikkey Dee. Making full use of his twin kick drums, he pummelled the kit until it felt like a helicopter was landing in The Corn Exchange.

Phil Campbell’s guitar solos combined the technically assured fiddle of Led Zeppelin era heavy rock with Motorhead’s brand of shrieking noise to formidable effect. At one point a wailing pinched harmonic was drowned under an unintentional squark of feedback which he imitated, deftly turning it into a chord of feedback.

The slower tempo and single throbbing chords meant that ‘Just ‘Cos You Got the Power’ stood out as one of the most powerful songs of the set. Lemmy’s strangled vocals: “Just ‘cos you got the power, doesn’t mean you got the right” were repeated as Campbell wove increasingly complex guitar lines around the hypnotic pounding of the rest of the band.

The demented ode to gambling, ‘Ace of Spades’ was the inevitable encore. The offbeat palpitations of the kick drum leant added fervency to the audience favourite.

Lemmy,  legs  apart,  a black Stetson jammed on his head and an iron cross on his chest had the unknowable aura of an old fashioned, no nonsense rockstar. While younger metallers like Ozzy Osbourne have fallen from grace, Lemmy is far from having any reason to give up rocking and collect his government pension.