A gritty, three-date, passion-filled return from The Almighty culminated in a show at O2 Forum Kentish Town in 2023. With the dust not yet settled, a further six dates were announced, and tonight, the band hit the Corn Exchange in Cambridge, with KK’s Steel Mill and Barrowlands to follow this year.
Even during their 30-year break, there was a vocal demand for the band’s return. At Steelhouse, The Almighty closed the Festival, and more recently, there were word-perfect fans at London’s Gibson Garage for an acoustic treat.
The Almighty took on the Gibson Garage on a blissful Thursday afternoon as they took their thirty-sixth anniversary with some true-to-the-core rock ‘n’ roll. The Scottish quartet featured all the original members. Ricky Warwick, Stumpy Monroe, Floyd London and Andy ‘Tantrum’ McCafferty took to the stage to commemorate their time together.
Anyone who has been to the Gibson Garage off Tottenham Court Road will know it is a complete Disneyland for guitarists and musicians alike. But despite the endless rows of gloriously made six-string instruments lining the walls, all eyes were on The Almighty. Warwick was as personable as ever, thanking the intimate audience in front of him and his bandmates.
A stripped-down version of Wild & Wonderful had the same thump as the recorded album version, with the audience’s feet hitting the floor in unison to the rock-out beat. In between songs, Warwick described the band’s rise out of a bitter-cold garage and onto the broader stages across the country. It is nostalgic for the times gone by but also a kick-up for what The Almighty are yet to bring us.
The real class moment came when they racked out Free ‘N’ Easy. It is impossible to downplay the magnitude of a timeless hit such as this, even in the acoustic setting. We were sure the shop floor above the venue could hear the sounds of this huge chorus singing along as the band swung each note bigger, matching their already huge smiles.
The Almighty sound great and look great. Stumpy said at the press re-launch for the band that he was the one with the most work to do to get up to speed. “I didn’t do it,” he smiles when we spoke after the show, “but I think I got away with it. Well, no one asked for their money back.”
As for those first three shows back, Floyd says they were all nervous. “A mixture of really looking forward to them, but then at the same time, you don’t want to fuck it up,” he told us. “I don’t want to make mistakes. So there’s a personal pride that you try and replicate what you did 30 years ago. That’s a significant amount of pressure as well. And then also to try and leave a bit of space to enjoy the four of us on the stage at the same time.”
Certainly, at the O2 Kentish Town Forum show, Floyd had a big smile on his face all night. ” I think we all did,” he laughs.
“I was happy,” Tantrum says. “I cut my finger before we went on. I finished my wine, and I was playing the guitar for about four hours before I started. I gave myself a cut right across the knuckle and then I nicked the top of the index finger. A cheese wire on the cut. Did I enjoy it? It was amazing.”
Wild & Wonderful closed the London show. I suggest it summed up the theme of those first three shows. “We always used to close with that quite a lot back in the day,” Ricky Warwick said. “It’s just a great song to finish it with. It kind of sums it up. Everyone knows it.”
After those first three shows were announced in March 2023, I remember seeing a properly painted vintage The Almighty leather jacket on a punter at a gig in Norwich a few weeks after. You knew some were digging down the back of their cupboards.
But even before that first announcement, Ricky was being bombarded with messages. “I used to get them every day,” he said. “Somebody would ask me on social media or even face to face, ‘When are The Almighty getting back together?’ Every day.
“People would say, does that not annoy you? I would go, no. It’s the opposite because that means that the band stood for something, and it meant a lot to a lot of people. So I was quite pleased that people would ask me that. When we got back together, that stopped,” to laughs all round.
It’s great to see the three guys happy in each other’s company, enjoying things and looking to the future.
“We didn’t know how it was going to go,” Ricky said, “How we would feel about playing together and how we get on. Would the vibe be good?
“So we had those three shows, and we had a great time. We got on great. We enjoyed playing the songs again. The reaction was phenomenal. So we were like, all right, it would be silly not to do some more.”
Now, with three dates closing this year and three to follow this time in 2025, we are all waiting to see what summer 2025 holds for The Almighty.
You expect there will be a festival or two in there.
