Resurrection men

HOLLYWOOD VAMPIRES / THE DAMNED, 14TH AUGUST 2026, CARDIFF CASTLE

Yet another hot, sunny evening at the Castle in this eternal summer, and Julie Andrews is sweetly announcing that the hills are alive with the sound of music. "Turn that shit off!" bellows Captain Sensible in his red-and-white-banded Monster Raving Loony Party shirt. The Damned still know how to make an entrance, half a century after forming.

In truth, the hills of South Wales are currently alive with the sound of crackling flames. The military have been called in to assist the emergency services, concertgoers' phones have pinged with the government warning of the severe wildfire risk and there's a distinctly smoky whiff in the air. And yet here's dapper Dave Vanian - part undertaker, part Prohibition-era pimp - taking delight in singing the chorus of 'Ignite': "I'm gonna set the world alight."

But then The Damned have never played by the rules, not even those of Punk Rock Club. Enlisting a member of punk's sworn enemies Pink Floyd, Nick Mason, to produce their second album Music For Pleasure was a provocative move and an excommunicable offence, as was their subsequent drift into psychedelia and goth rock, and the 1986 take on 'Eloise'.

Barry Ryan's crooner classic isn't the only cover to get an airing tonight; freakbeat gem 'Making Time' by The Creation features on new album Not Like Everybody Else, along with nine other tracks that inspired the band's late guitarist Brian James to first pick up an instrument. The record saw original drummer Rat Scabies return to the fold, and tonight underlines that there's life in the old dogs yet.

It's a shame they couldn't have been accommodated on the same  bill as first-wave punk contemporaries The Sex Pistols, The Stranglers and The Undertones here a fortnight ago. But that seems immaterial when you're witnessing them blast through 'Neat Neat Neat', 'New Rose' and 'Smash It Up' back to back like the last 50 years never happened.

And so - after 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' and an intro video that makes me want to cringe myself inside out - to Hollywood Vampires. This collective - I hesitate to call them a "supergroup", for reasons that will become apparent - could be written off as a Johnny Depp vanity project, following in the footsteps of Keanu Reeves and Steven Seagal, though Depp has at least had the good grace to surround himself with high-profile musicians who cast him in shadow.

While the actor has become permanently trapped in the character of Jack Sparrow, Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry appears to be wearing all of the rich stuff looted from another fictional pirate, The Goonies' One-Eyed Willy. Goth ringmaster Alice Cooper, meanwhile, is a baroque panda with a deeply disconcerting trouser bulge. The quartet, rounded out by guitarist Tommy Hendrikson, are like a hard rock Mount Rushmore: craggy, weathered and extremely big-headed.

The premise is that Hollywood Vampires are paying their respects to legends and personal heroes of rock. The reality is barely any better than you'd encounter at the Globe any night of the week, albeit with overinflated production values. We're treated to (ironically bloodless) covers of The Who, The Doors and Jeff Beck - the setlist reading like the tracklisting of one of those compilation albums put out to coincide with Father's Day that would subsequently get stuck in the family car's CD player and have to be forcibly removed at the garage for the sake of everyone's sanity.

Perry proclaims his enthusiasm for punk with all the conviction of a man signing his own death warrant, but I'd gladly sign mine if it meant not having to hear their version of David Bowie's '"Heroes"'. Remarkably, another Depp-fronted cover - a heinous Hammer-horror-meets-Marilyn-Manson rendition  of The Velvet Underground's 'Venus In Furs' that will haunt me for all the wrong reasons - is even worse. At this point, calling them a tribute act feels absurdly generous; they're not so much honouring the dead as pissing on their graves, and hammering a stake through rock's barely beating heart in the process.

And yet.

When, at the end of the main set, they return to more familiar territory - the glorious stomp of AC/DC's 'Highway To Hell', Perry chopping out the riff to 'Walk This Way', Cooper declaring "School's out for the summer!" - a most unsettling thing occurs: a gormless grin gradually spreads across my face. This, finally, is fun of the biggest and dumbest kind, and my genetic hardwiring means that its lobotomising effect is (unfortunately) irresistible.

(An edited version of this review originally appeared on the Buzz website.)