The Living End walk on stage to a news montage of events from 1997 including the death of Princess Diana, the Thredbo landslide and also, fittingly, the release of their breakthrough EP Second Solution/Prisoner Of Society. The precursor to their self-titled album to be released a year later, it seems half a lifetime ago. For many in attendance, it is. Tonight is the band's first of 11 shows at the Richmond venue they cut their teeth at and part of an ambitious 39-date retrospective national tour. Renowned as a live band, the tour is not just an opportunity for the trio to revel, but a thank you to a generation of fans.

The record they are playing in its entirety, much like The Clash's eponymous debut, explores British punk, ska and rockabilly elements with as much vitality as their idols displayed 21 years earlier. It's their most successful commercial album and seemingly a hit parade, which spawned single after single. As per tracklisting, they begin with Prisoner Of Society, a song often reserved for encores. Like a watered down version of Rage Against The Machine's Killing In The Name, the rhetoric is youthfully vague, nonetheless appropriated by the crowd as, fists in the air, they shout the refrain, “We don't need no one to tell us what to do.” Sure, the context of the lyrics for both band and crowd has changed, Chris Cheney now resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two children, but it's delivered with the same punk-rock disobedience that Cheney (who wrote the song aged 22) would have belted it out back in the day. It's the song that broke the band and fitting that it's the first song they perform on this run of dates.

Soon followed by Second Solution, which Cheney introduces as “our first real single”, he incites the crowd, telling an anecdote of how the song's clip was shot at the same venue in 1997, adding that the underage crowd back then were more energetic. Naturally it provokes a frenzy of movement, which doesn't stop for the remainder of the night. The themes of tonight's songs – the Dunblane school massacre of Monday or the industrial development of the Kennett government in All Torn Down – seem distant, but it's not so much about the meaning of the songs, more the memories associated with hearing them.

Many of the songs that bookend the album haven't been performed live in years, if ever. Tonight they are reinvigorated, most notably Trapped featuring the makeshift Area 7 horn section. Despite the guests, there's no sign, nor acknowledgment of original drummer Travis Dempsey, slightly tainting the legitimacy of the album he helped create.

“We're just a rockabilly band from Wheelers Hill,” says Cheney. A retrospective show with integrity, they race through the album with little sign of self-importance. It's a typical punk show of yesteryear, fast, furious and for the fans. With ten more shows to go, it will be hard to top tonight.