Alien Ant Farm: Northumbria University, Newcastle

THE LIKES OF KORN and Limp Bizkit may have been the stars of nu-metal, but Californians Alien Ant Farm were the movement's successful pranksters. While contemporaries sang about social alienation, the tattooed San Franciscans took a riffily cheeky cover of Michael Jackson's 'Smooth Criminal' into top threes around the world. Fifteen years on, here they are again, playing their unit-shifting 2001 album Anthology to older rockers reliving their youth and younger ones who can't possibly have been there the first time. When big, crop-haired vocalist Dryden Mitchell interrupts opener Courage to ask "How y'all doing'?", he receives a big cheer.