Therapy? in Amsterdam

I don’t know if the 800 Dutch folk shoehorned into the Melkweg are au fait with the term “bollocks!” but I’m sure they’d happily toss it the way of the begrudgers back home who’ve declared Therapy? past their sell-by date failures. Despite being a tough couple of years – a record company who’d come last in a ‘Knowing Your Arse From Your Elbow’ contest and the departure of drum abuser Graham Hopkins – the only whiff going round tonight is that of local coffee shop skunk.

If there’s any proving to be done, it happens during the opening ‘Hey Satan – You Rock’. One of the stand-outs from their new High Anxiety album, it demonstrates that (1) The band have lost none of their pop-punk-metal songwriting guile and (2) Despite being a Derby County supporter, Neil Cooper is a choice replacement for Hopper.

Any restraint that the crowd might have been showing goes out the window when Andy Cairns announces, “This is an old traditional Irish song”, and launches into the chainsaw riff from ‘Nowhere’.

‘Church Of Noise’, ‘Stories’ and ‘Die Laughing’ follow in quick succession and, well, it’s mayhem in the mosh-pit. Refreshingly, the bouncers don’t overreact and even allow stage-divers a brief moment of glory before returning them to the scrum.

Hearteningly, new songs like ‘If It Kills Me’ and ‘Not In My Name’ go down almost as well as the old, with a delighted Andy Cairns, Michael McKeegan and Martin McCarrick throwing every shape in the guitar heroes’ book in response.

McGarrick also gets to do his cello hero bit during ‘Diane’ which remains as darkly potent as ever. A singalong-with-Therapy? ‘Knives’ and ‘Screamager’ later and it’s off into the night for some Amsterdam divilment.

Past their sell-by date? As the locals would say, Kloten!