It seems fitting that as the northern winds waft icy cold blasts across Manchester that they should also blow into town an exquisite Swedish Melo-Death triple bill. Aside from the obvious combination of gruff vocals and melodic guitar lines, what all three acts have in common is grit, determination and resilience. With a heady mix of hard work, blood, sweat and road-miles, all three bands have earned the respect that the sold out crowd show them. These are acts that show that it may well be a long way to the top, but if you stick to your guns and your principals you will get there. 

Hypocrisy are first out the traps and (by a year) are the eldest of the three bands. Still very much a cult concern, their brand of melodic death actually shows the most variation and depth. There are shades of goth, industrial and black all over tonight’s set, as well as the usual trad metal elements. With no new album to promote we get a set drawn exclusively from their ’96 to ’05 run of albums (only Catch 22 is ignored). What is striking about Hypocrisy’s material is how atmospheric and emotionally raw it is. There is a real sense of passion at play in Peter Tägtgren’s songwriting, as if these tales have to be told and therefore tumble straight off the page. His songs feel natural rather than clinically created. Peter’s gruff but emotive vocal delivery is also brimming with raw emotion. He lives and breathes these tracks, each and every time he re-tells them. It goes without saying that they are excellent tonight, they always are. It just would have been good if the entrance queue had moved faster, so more people could have seen them.

Arch Enemy have brought their own stage set. In fact, in their eyes and those of the fevered fan boys and girls up front,this is an Arch Enemy headline show. It is just that they have chosen to go on before their Viking obsessed tour mates. Tonight, they are truly magnificent and Alissa utterly owns the stage. The fact that she is still a relatively new arrival seems non-sensical and unbelievable. It feels like she has always been a vital and essential part of Arch Enemy’s architecture. Tracks like 'Under Black Flags We March' and the sublime 'My Apocalypse' are now her songs, rather than numbers where she is trying to emulate a previous incumbent’s performance. In fact, you just can’t see the join between the material from “Will To Power” and “War Eternal” and the earlier Angela Gossow era stuff.

They are just so tight and perfectly honed tonight. In a truncated hour long set they perfectly illustrate that you don’t need inflatable statues, plastic hammers and tons of fire if you have got the songs. They let the music do the talking and it quite happily whispers sweet nothings into my ears. 'As the Pages Burn’ is big, muscular and full of punchy riffs and 'Nemesis' has a chorus to die for. By the time they are done the worshiping throng of fan boys and girls stretches all the way back to the bar at the far end of the building. They exit the stage to a rapturous and thunderous applause. Yes I am one of those fanboys, but they are so on-form tonight.

Amon Amarth have spent a long, long time getting to this point, but along the way they have learnt this live game is all about showmanship and boy do they put on a show. On paper, this evening is utterly absurd. There are two roadie’s dressed as Vikings beating the shit out of each other during the songs, the drum riser is a (historically inaccurate) horned Viking helmet and the show climaxes with Johan attacking an inflatable sea monster with a plastic hammer. However, a sense of the absurd is also one of the central reasons why Metal is alive and kicking fifty years on from its inception. In a live setting, Amon Amarth channel everything that is wonderful about the music that we love. Tonight they put on an arena sized show that would put Maiden to shame. There is fire, props, fire, pyro, fire, the aforementioned plastic hammer, fire, drinking horns and, well, some more fire. It is ninety minutes of high octane, over the top fun.

The only chinks in the (leather) armour is that when heard alongside their other material, you realise pretty darn soon how poor the stuff from new album “Berserker” actually is. It just doesn’t have any stand out moments. There is nothing on par with 'The Pursuit of Vikings’, 'Guardians of Asgaard' or even 'Raise Your Horns’. But to be honest nobody is here to hear 'Shield Wall’, 'Fafner’s Gold’ or 'Crack the Sky’. We are congregated to Viking row to 'Prediction Of Warfare’, to scream along to 'Twilight Of The Thunder God' and to raise our horns, lots. Musically, Arch Enemy may be the stronger act, but in terms of performance you would have to row several oceans to find a better live band than Amon Amarth. It has taken twenty seven years to get here, but tonight they cemented their position at Metal’s top (long) table.