Live Review: Therapy? (Leeds Warehouse, 15/4/22)

It's safe to say that getting Therapy?'s greatest hits tour organised has been something of a trial - the fact that what was supposed to be the "So Much For The 30 Year Plan" tour has ended up becoming the "So Much For The 32 Year Plan" tour thanks to the onset of Covid tells you everything. Still, better late than never and as the band slam into tonight's set with the ferocious assault of Nausea which opened their major label debut Nurse, followed by the sinister Stories, it's clear that they're on good form tonight.

The nature of Therapy? gigs has definitely changed a bit since your correspondent first saw the band live way way back in 1995 on the first night of the Infernal Love tour at Leeds Town & Country. Back then, the gigs were a barely suppressed roar of rage like Joy Division (whose Isolation they cover tonight) squeezed through a Big Black filter - if you were a teenager or twentysomething who'd taken solace in the feral angst of Die Laughing or Knives then it almost felt like an exorcism of rage and frustration. These days, of course, we're all in our forties and fifties and the atmosphere tonight is more one of a gathering of friends come together to enjoy some good music - that Therapy? live album from a few years back wasn't called Communion for nothing.

As you'd expect from a greatest hits set, the focus tonight is very much on the band's '90s heyday but when the likes of Nowhere, Opal Mantra, Turn, Church of Noise and Potato Junkie still pack just as much of a brutal punch as they did back then, it seems churlish to complain about that while the more measured likes of Diane bristle with menace and Teethgrinder's mix of almost techno style drums and its piercing riff still sounds genuinely unique today. Neil Cooper and Mike McKeegan remain a supremely tight rhythm section after all this time with the former being allowed a drum solo during Potato Junkie as it's his birthday and the latter getting a chance to go back to his Evil Priest days with a cover of Judas Priest's Breaking The Law during the encore. Meanwhile, Andy Cairns remains the demonic ringmaster at the centre of the storm to good effect, geeing the crowd up throughout.

In terms of newer stuff, we get the menacing Callow from 2018's Cleave album and the frenetic Still Hurts from 2015's Disquiet plus a new song Joy which shows that the group are anything but a spent force - Cairns promises that the group will be back to tour the new record hopefully by the end of the year and I'm certainly looking forward to hearing it. By the time Screamager closes the evening out, it's pretty clear that while they may be 32 years into their career, there's plenty of life left in Therapy? yet. Roll on that new album...

Pictures taken by Andy James Close. All rights reserved.

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