therapy? live

Tonight could well have been a night of pure nostalgia for me, you see not only was the last time I saw Therapy? way back in 1998 at the Milton Keynes Bowl on the first ever U.K. Ozzfest when they stepped in as last minute replacements for Korn but support act Ricky Warwick is probably best known as the singer of The Almighty who were the very first signed band I ever saw live in about 1993/4 in the Royal Court, probably about five minutes walk from this very venue.

Before my walk into nostalgia though local support band Metro Manilla Aide warmed the crowd up nicely. Musically they really don’t do an awful lot for me but the singer’s shouted stream-of-consciousness style lyrics are hilarious and his stage antics (initially appearing onstage wearing a sumo suit) make for an entertaining start to the night.

Main support act Ricky Warwick plays an entirely different, though no less entertaining style. Even those familiar with Ricky from his days with The Almighty might not have been expecting the “tough folk” music that Ricky now plies with the likes of Johnny Cash and Woody Guthrie seemingly being the main influences at work. Playing a mixture of his own solo material, reworkings of a few of The Almighty’s songs and acoustic versions of classic metal songs such as Ace of Spades and Number of the Beast (re-titled as The Number of the Man In Black to pay homage to both Iron Maiden and Johnny Cash). Warwick’s style is refreshingly straight-forward and he wins over a large part of the crowd tonight – and quite frankly anyone who writes a song about Buckfast is alright with me!

As I mentioned before the last time I saw tonight’s headliners was at Milton Keynes Bowl in 1998 in front of a crowd of thousands of fans mostly of bands like Black Sabbath, Pantera, Slayer and Fear Factory, a day when they went down remarkably well. I will have to admit upfront that I’ve largely lost touch with what the band have been up to for the past ten years or so but the broad cross-section of people here tonight from old-school indie types to people wearing Cannibal Corpse shirts is testament to the band’s enduring and wide-ranging appeal. The band chose tonight to play songs in the order which they were released and, as you may expect, it was the classic Teethgrinder and the Troublegum material that gets the biggest reaction.

Choosing to play the majority of tonight’s set this way is a brave move, considering that many, like myself, have lost touch with the band over recent years and it could have led to them playing to a largely empty venue towards the end of their set if they couldn’t hold the attention of people unfamiliar with their newer material. The fact that this didn’t happen and that the energy levels of both the crowd and the band stayed as high as they had been at the beginning of the set only goes to show that not only is Andy Cairns as affable a frontman as you could ever want but that Therapy? still know how to write a great song with a killer hook and perhaps those newer albums are worthy of another listen. Leaving the venue into a cold Liverpool night with the chorus of the band’s cover of the Joy Division classic Isolation lodged in my head I hadn’t just had my nostalgia fulfilled but I’d had my interest in two artists that had slipped under my radar for far too long renewed.

by Neil Woodfin