The crowd that made Papa Roach’s long awaited return to London a sell-out is a curious sight.

Amidst a majority in their early twenties, who either didn’t renounce baggy jeans and wallet chains when Nu-Metal crashed, or have dug out the genre’s uniform for one night of nostalgia for their recent teens, there are a few furtive-looking characters in Motley Crue shirts. We suspect them of indulging a guilty pleasure discovered when Papa Roach penned a clutch of hard rock informed numbers in 2006. The band themselves aren’t taking sides, delivering a set that mixes a predictably strong showing from current album Metamorphosis, with enough early angst and rapping to make the point they’ve not forgotten their roots.

Given the dramatic nature of their evolution it’s not an easy balancing act, but nonetheless it’s pulled off, in a performance which makes the real winners those who were just out for a high-energy rock show, never mind what song they were waiting on.

A few present are overheard to comment that frontman Jacoby Shaddix is looking a little more, well, toned, lately, and it’s hardly surprising when, during 90 minutes of speaker-scaling and charging about the stage, he barely catches breath. Punters with any reservations find it tough to ignore a string of shouted encouragements to get into the spirit of a night; this is about rock n’ roll, whatever guise it comes in. It’s high time to put the prejudices of musical fashion aside here.

Alison B