Live review: Limp Bizkit, Manchester AO Arena

You don't need to ask directions to find Limp Bizkit’s show this evening. Simply follow the legions of red baseball caps snaking towards the AO Arena. Because for one night, Manchester is home to Loserville. Population: Over 20,000 fans, five bands and 46 fucks in one fucked-up rhyme.

Brazilian riot menina Karen Dió is the perfect spark to tonight’s powder keg of mosh silliness. Kicking out thrashy jams like Cut Your Hair, she bounds around and owns the stage like a cross between Kathleen Hanna and Scrappy Doo. “Y’alright R kid?” she quips to the locals and chucks in a criminally fun punked-up version of Chappell Roan’s Casual for good measure.

Next, N8NOFACE is a one-man Prodigy. Plucked straight from hardcore punk backyard parties in Arizona, his motormouthed tirades about dirty cops and dirtier drugs delivered over juddering synths feel like the nightmarish flip-side to Bizkit’s party jams for a fucked Generation Strange.

Ecca Vandal are a no-brainer to prime the crowd. They tread the line between larger-than-life hip-hop and mammoth rock grooves, with seismic choruses on Cruising To Self Soothe designed to blow up big stages. By contrast, emo-rapper Bones brings a considerably darker vibe. Quite literally, as he spends his set bouncing through smoke pouring from a huge skull. His graveyard rapping does the trick, though, getting the crowd jumping to menacing cuts READY2RUMBLE and RestInPeace.

If up to this point your mouth has been writing cheques that your ass can’t cash, though, then you’re out of luck because the moment Limp Bizkit tear into Break Stuff’s punch-drunk groove all bets are off. To call the movement of the crowd a mosh-pit would be a severe understatement. As the band push and pull with each explosive groove – and there are plenty tonight – the arena floor is a constant churning sea of bouncing bodies, beers and red caps.

“This thing is like a time machine,” Fred Durst says as he promises to take us back to 1999. “You just have to say one thing and this fucker kicks in: If only we could flyyyy,” and before you know it My Generation (and several bodies) are airborne. Meanwhile, Wes Borland’s colourful witchdoctor get-up feels appropriate as the resident of freak of frequencies, unleashing bone-rattling riffs from Rollin’ to the sinuous licks of Take A Look Around and Livin’ It Up.

Thing is, time travel is unnecessary because the band are experiencing a new heyday 30 years in. About 70 per cent of the crowd raise their hands when Fred asks if this is their first Bizkit show. And when he invites two red-capped fans onstage, who may not even have been in nappies when the frontman first invited the world to kiss his starfish, they spit each bar of Full Nelson like it’s their anthem. Fred beams like a proud, potty-mouthed uncle.

A curfew-defying second bout of Break Stuff delivers the knockout, leaving this crowd wrecked and grinning. For anyone who ever wrote them off in 1999 (or, indeed, ever), Limp Bizkit are having the last laugh.

Read this next:

• The 20 greatest Limp Bizkit songs – ranked
  
• “What’s disappointing is how little Limp Bizkit have progressed”: Our original 2000 review of Chocolate Starfish And The Hotdog Flavored Water
• Limp Bizkit: How Significant Other saw the nu-metal anti-heroes take over the world