Therapy? have indulged in a fair amount of healthy miscegenation over the years: from the industrial hardcore sounds of Babyteeth and Pleasure Death to the three-minute heroism of Troublegum to neo-goth atmospheres of Infernal Love to the Beefheart meets Big Black mash-ups of Suicide Pact – You First and The Crooked Timber. But the attitude has always been pure moshpit trouper spirit. Therapy? might well become reincarnated as a deathless post-apocalyptic roadshow, pitching their Mad Max Chatauqua tent in the wastelands of the Cursed Earth. They’ve got that Terminator code of ethics down pat. They’ll never roll over. They’ll never stop. After the bomb, it’ll be the cockroaches, Lemmy, a few New Model Army diehards and Therapy? left.
The M’head reference is probably the most apposite. Therapy? have enough friends in the ranks of the hairy hordes to see them through lean times. The metalheads couldn’t give a fuck about Pro-Tools and Auto-Tunes-plagued prevailing winds. The metalheads merely insist you bring the noise that makes the meat and mead go down all the easier.
And the trio have surely brought the noise on their first live album, recorded over three nights last March as part of the band’s 20th anniversary celebrations. The tunes date from the paleolithic (‘Potato Junkie’, ‘Teethgrinder’) to the period when they were the most unlikely chart act this side of the Wurzels (‘Nowhere’, ‘Die Laughing’, Husker Du’s ‘Diane’) to latter-day classics like ‘Exiles’ and ‘The Head That Tried To Strangle Itself’. Dig those song titles: ‘Meat Abstract’, Dancing With Manson’ , ‘Die Like A Mother Fucker’ (“Happy people have no stories”). Punk-metal with a PhD, by way of Bacon and Beckett.
“Our only regret,” quoth the band, “is that it won’t be coming out in a scratch and sniff sleeve”.
Shudder.
‘Key Track: ‘Meat Abstract’