November 21, 2000

Therapy? / London Camden Underworld

Goblin play lunging doom-rock like they are riding lightning bolts...

Heroically hirsute, flailing tattooed arms in classic air-guitar poses, Ben Ward is a man hewn from pure rock, perfectly suited to fronting the planet-swallowing riff-beast that is Orange Goblin. Coming on like mushroom-gobbling stoners to a man, ver Goblin play lunging doom-rock like they are riding lightning bolts, Ward spewing mantras of nihilistic excess and beckoning you to kill your parents and hit the road. Those who've just discovered Queens Of The Stone Age are beckoned this way...

Ten years ago, no-one could've imagined septic driller-killer punx Therapy? taking the stage alongside such hoary, long-haired (but brilliant) nonsense. Perhaps it's the difference a decade makes, or maybe we were wrong about Therapy? all along, but tonight the band ditch the furrowed alterna-brows of their early days and exult in the sheer nosebleed rawk thrills their back catalogue provides.

It's a show peppered with shout-outs to those who were there for Therapy? in "the tough times" but you'd be hard-pressed to mistake them as a band on the skids. They've sold out a three-night stint here, and a gleeful Andy Cairns revisits his back pages like a Catholic boy savouring the frisson of sin. Therapy?'s soundtrack of 'the bad things', set to hardcore-punk rhythms, played on 'eavy metal guitars and littered with real-pop hooks, is simply ageless, as evidenced by the shockingly young moshpit, most of whom must've been in nursery school when 'Teethgrinder' was released.

"James Joyce is fucking my sister!" howls a grinning Cairns, during 'Potato Junkie'. Beaming the smile of the vindicated.

Stevie Chick

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