Country star Eric Church plays the game, but knows how to rock it

Generally speaking, there tends to be a scarcity of heavy metal’s signature devil horn hand gesture at most country music gigs.

Also in short supply: the kind of rippin’ guitar leads that can only be played with legs splayed and mouth agape, double bass drumming that pounds innards like a fist to the gut and shrieking falsetto vocals suggestive of an alley cat being fed into a paper shredder tail first.

In 15 or so awesomely overwrought seconds on Friday night, however, Eric Church and his band remedied all these deficiencies during the thundering conclusion of “Creepin,’” a song about heartache and hangovers whose goal seemed to be to create the musical equivalent of a hurricane coming ashore.

On the very next tune, the country singer gave a lesson in rock and roll.

What it is: “It’s a hip shaking devil on the stage in Tupelo/ It’s doing what ya want instead of doin’ what you’re told.”

What it isn’t: “It ain’t long hair, tattoos, playin’ too loud / It ain’t a middle finger on a T-shirt the establishment’s tryin’ to sell.”

Here’s the thing: Church knows said establishment well because he’s succeeded within it. His latest album, “The Outsiders,” was the top-selling country record of 2014 and he’s notched plenty of hits on mainstream radio.

He’s been embraced by the industry powers-that-be he views warily on “Devil Devil,” a song from his latest record that bemoans the commerce-first ethos of contemporary country (“You see, it all comes down to money /Not romantic art of days gone past.”)

And so “The Outsiders,” and Church’s fiery, fantastic performance on Friday, is both a tip of the trucker hat — Church wears no Stetsons — to country music business-as-usual and a repudiation of it.

He plays the game — plenty of de rigueur songs on this night about Skoal-stained jeans, overbearing boss men and the transformative powers of a cold beer on a Friday night — but at the same time, Church does his best to play it his way.

As he told the Review-Journal in an interview prior to his show at the Cosmopolitan, Church was raised on rock and roll as much as country, and plenty of the former informs the latter in his repertoire.

On Friday, Church performed in front of over three-dozen amps piled high behind him Judas Priest-style and took the stage with “Electric Worry” from jam metallers Clutch blasting through the P.A.

“How ‘Bout You,” a banjo powered boot stomper, referenced the trilling guitars of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” and as Church was testifying to his solidarity with country music traditionalism on “Pledge Allegiance to the Hag,” he did so over guitars more indebted to Metallica than Merle Haggard, who the song was about.

Church has been selling out large arenas in other markets on his current tour. Just a few weeks back, he set the attendance record at the biggest indoor venue in Nashville, where he lives.

The 4,000 capacity Chelsea is a far smaller hall than the band has grown accustomed to playing.

“We miss rooms like this,” he said near show’s end. “It’s where we come from.”

Church seemed especially invigorated by the setting, announcing that the group was diverging from its usual line-up of songs and playing a set list that it never had before, culling heavily from Church’s 2006 debut, “Sinners Like Me,” from which the band aired nine songs.

“There is no rhyme or reason for tonight,” Church said early in the evening. “We’re just playing what we want to play.”

As such, the show had a loose, spontaneous feel to it, enhanced by a raucous crowd who played air guitar on hoisted legs and held their footwear aloft during “These Boots.”

That song testified to another side of Church, the equally wistful and world-weary romantic whose black-and-blue heart has been tenderized by regret and a longing for days gone by even as he sings of his current contentment with family life.

This is a theme of number of Church’s songs: the passing of time, mistakes made, lessons learned, often with a lump in the throat.

“Like a storm, time rolls on,” Church sang during fan favorite “Talladega.”

“Most days in life don’t stand out,” he continued. “But life’s about those days that will.”

On one of his most poignant and popular tunes, “Springsteen,” prefaced on this night by a few bars of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” performed acoustically, Church sang of the power of music to bring the past into the present in an instant.

“Funny how a melody sounds like a memory,” he noted in song.

Springsteen himself once sang of glory days passing you by in the wink of an eye.

Church’s eyes were hidden behind shades on Friday, as usual, but odds were he was winking right back.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow on Twitter @JasonBracelin.