The Odyssey Arena is Belfast's newest concert venue and holds around 12 thousand punters. It was always obvious that a band like Velvet Revolver, despite the success of their fist album, were never going to sell the place out. And they didn't. I reckon about 6 thousand made the trip out to the Odyssey on Wednesday night to catch one of the most exciting new rock bands around at the moment.

The venue employ a similar system to that used in the Point Depot, i.e. the hall is made to fit the crowd by way of a huge curtain along the back blocking the back half of the Ice Rink off from the stage, thus making sure the punters are squeezed in a bit tighter and the venue doesn't look half empty no matter how many tickets have been sold.

I didn't bother with the support bands and by all accounts Biffy Clyro were embarrassingly bad. But as I never heard them myself I will reserve judgement.

Duff McKagan took the stage first and blasted out the bass-line to Contraband's opening track "Sucker Train Blues". He was greeted enthusiastically before being joined by the rest of the band and launching into the main riff of the song. This was quickly followed by "Do it for the kids", track number two from Contraband. For these first few numbers the vocals overpowered the guitars, which were barely audible, but the soundman seemed to get a handle on things after that, although for me the whole gig wasn't loud enough right throughout the evening.

Scott Weiland is a unique and unusual frontman for a heavy rock band. Much more in the punk vein of an Iggy Pop or a Sid Vicious, his stage gear of leather trousers, shirt and tie and Nazi peak cap looked pretty weird next to Slash and Duff's much more traditional LA rock fashion styles. But there is no doubt he has both the charisma and the voice required for the role, and his quirkiness maybe gives the band something different, more of an edge than others in the genre.

To be honest the band looked tired for the first part of the set and it was only after the huge reception afforded "Big Machine" that things really seemed to pick up. This and the ballad "Falling To Pieces" were the best received songs of the early part of the set. We got two G'n'R songs, "It's So Easy" and "Mr Brownstone", which both went down well, but it is a measure of this bands emergence as a power in their own right that the reception for the best of the band's own material was greater than that reserved for the G'n'R stuff. Highlight of the night for me though was a track by neither VR or G'n'R, namely Stone Temple Pilots "Sex Type Thing". In the middle of this track Scott Weiland decided to go walk about among the audience, "I trust and respect you, now I'm going to come down there so you trust and respect me". At this he left the stage and went through the ground floor crowd and up to the steps of one of the balcony sections. Here, with fans arms draped around him he led the crowd in an impromptu sing-along. It was great to see and a real goose bump moment. He even stopped on his way back down the stairs to personally pick up a fan, accidentally knocked to the floor by security.

The encore was superb. Slash emerged wearing his trademark top hat for the first time that evening and brandishing a Gibson double neck guitar. After some lovely Page like playing Slash launched into the acoustic intro from Pink Floyd's classic Wish You Were Here. For sure I thought we were just going to get the start of the song but Weiland and the rest of the guys soon emerged to play it the whole way through. Set Me Free was next and went down a storm, with Weiland wailing "freedom, freedom" over and over at the end while Slash ripped into his guitar. We even got an excellent guitar duel between Slash and Dave before Slither rounded the evening off nicely. Stretched out to almost 10 minutes with a fittingly gonzo climax, the band and audience finally connected in a big way.

In conclusion, a good show, but not a great one. Once VR have a few more records under their belt and a few more big tracks however, their arena rock show will be complete. They already possess that element of danger any top notch r'n'r band require, but being only one album old are still a little short on truly top class material to hold the attention of an arena for two hours.

WORDS BY DUCK, PHOTOS BY MARK McGAUGHEY

You can view more of Mark's pics from this gig plus some video footage HERE