Gig review: Machine Gun Kelly at First Direct Arena, Leeds

A tattooed string-bean figure of a man, bedecked with a mop of unruly hair, the chorus of boyband-esque screams in response almost physically buffet him off his feet.

The loquacious Texan is arguably more tabloid staple than chart fixture, but there’s little denying the rapper’s rebirth as a guitar-toting pop-punk pin-up has done wonders for both his and the genre’s commercial resurgence. This date, at the tail-end of a trek behind platinum smash Mainstream Sellout, is a far cry from the neighbouring O2 Academy venue he played on his last jaunt to Yorkshire – and there’s a real frisson of possibility he could yet climb higher.

Across a rattling show, it certainly appears his sharp pivot towards six-string power chords has tapped into the larger-than-life theatricality such enormo-dome gigs demand. His band enter to the bombastic cabaret of My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade; he himself is airdropped from a pink prop helicopter amid frenzied opener Born with Horns; dry ice and pyro splatter the writ-large anthemics of God Save Me and Maybe. The tricks are familiar, but the execution is giddily slick, an endorphin-fed sugar-rush.

Throwbacks within his own catalogue are limited; MGK knows which side his bread is buttered and where the influx of fresh fans have come from to elevate him to these stages. It explains why the handful of cuts from his Soundcloud rap-tinged days – Floor 13’s techno-metal diss, the trap-torched El Diablo – feel comparatively DOA despite the variance they bring. The converts are here for the mosh-friendly Emo Girl, or the Pixies-aping Papercuts, and that’s what they’re going to get.

Still, as the bridge between the two, Baker may have hit on the maximalist emotionalism that makes both oddly familiar bedfellows better than any of his peers. Detractors will whip the knives out for these confections – the pick-and-mix aesthetics, the musical grab-bag charcuterie, their performer’s limited vocal range – but when several thousand screaming punters are hollering along to My Ex’s Best Friend, or whipping out phone lights for effective ballad finale Twin Flame, these criticisms seem witheringly irrelevant. MGK looks like he has a good thing going on – and he knows he’d be a fool to squander it too.