The reactivated Killers seem to be on a one-band mission to make epic guitar rock fashionable again. Back after a hiatus, they have ditched the disco/electronic stylings of 2008's Day & Age – which crueller critics dubbed "disco shit" – to get back to a turbocharged version of the hurtling sound that, from 2004, made them the hottest thing in rock. Having dispensed with the iffy solo albums, ruckuses and motivational crises of the mega-selling rock band, the reactivated Las Vegas four-piece sound bigger than ever, a gale force of sound.

The Killers are old hands at the arena-rock experience, but recreating it in a relatively small venue doesn't involve flying dwarves or rubber bats: just musicians who look iconic in black, and a frontman – Brandon Flowers – whose enormous holler suggests a stick-thin indie frontman possessed by the ghost of Pavarotti.

This one-off festival warm-up previews Battle Born, the comeback album for which they turned to Elton John's lyricist Bernie Taupin for tips on creating epics, and were advised to begin with titles. Thus, Miss Atomic Bomb is an earthquake melodrama with Flying V guitars. The Rising Tide could equally have been called Bowie, With Added Cannons. The gloriously overblown Runaways has Flowers actually holler: "I swear on the head of our unborn child."

When old hits Mr Brightside and Smile Like You Mean It arrive like tank battalions, it feels like being bludgeoned rather than seduced into submission. However, the euphoria suggests the audience have missed that feeling, especially accompanied by throwing lager and punching the air. They sing the "I got soul but I'm not a soldier" line from All These Things That I've Done after the band have left the stage, by which time the venue's rear wall has probably left the building and landed in the road.