Another visit of the Northern Irish in Athens and another devastating performance took place last Saturday at Gagarin 205. Therapy? is a guarantee in their live performances and this was shown for the umpteenth time in front of the Athenian audience and the fondness they have shown them throughout their career.
Half Gramme Of Soma, a band that has been around for over ten years and that I had simply heard of, opened the show. Even though their musical style is far from Therapy?’s one, since they indulge in a doom / stoner idiom, they seemed to satisfy the audience that hadn’t yet filled the club. They had a very good music and nice ideas from a musical point of view, of course I have some objections about their stage performance, something I think they should look into, as well as their social media presence and the lack of information thst makes things a bit difficult. Their performance lasted just over 50 minutes and I consider it satisfactory.
At 21.30′ Therapy? took the stage and were really storming. They presented a set from the biggest part of their history while their excellent latest album “Hard Cold Fire” was represented by “WOE”, “Joy” and “Days Kollaps”. Both Cairns and McKeegan gave a performance and audience interaction recital and Carnes’ some stonerisms went rather unnoticed. Of course they played all the hits of the past such as “Isolation”, “Stories”, Diane” and “Nowhere” with which they closed the show, and after the halfway point, they played parts of “Shadow Play”, “Iron Man” and “Breaking The Law”, which they had linked with intros or outros of their own songs. Carnes remembered their first show in Athens thirty years ago in Technopolis and didn’t “forget” the British government, “decorating” it with the appropriate comments somewhere towards the end.
It was an excellent performance from a band that never disappoints its audience and during the 90 minutes that it lasted, it was a great show that brought everyone in the club on their feet. What I was thinking as I left Gagarin 205 was “well, that’s a good start for this year”!
Setlist: Nausea intro, Nausea, Isolation, Joy, Unbeliever, Misery, Neck Freak, WOE, Turn, Trigger Inside, Disgracelands, Poundland Of Hope And Glory”, Stories, Days Kollaps, Teethgrinder, Diane, Opal Mantra, Die LaughingPotato Junkie, Knives, Screamager, Nowhere.
Dimitris Kazantzis
