The Thermals Live¶
388 words on Live
To round everything off I went to see The Thermals with two friends. They were supported by a band called Monotonix who played sort of average rock music with a hint of aggression. Music I wouldn’t be too excited about. But they made up for that by the show they put on. To begin with, they didn’t play on stage but just in front of it on the same level as the audience. At first I thought that was just a clever bit of laziness by the stage technicians who could have The Thermals’ gear right in place that way, but it soon looked like that was just part of Monotonix’ setup to give them more direct audience interaction.
In what followed we saw plenty of beer spilled around the band, people carried away by the band’s maniac singer who’d also climb on everything he could find, roll around on the ground and give the microphone a good throwing around. To top things off they started setting fire to the drum kit halfway through, and at the end just distributed the kits parts around the audience so they could go on playing.
So while I wasn’t too amazed by the music, I quite enjoyed the show they put on. With all the ‘reckless’ running and jumping around their singer did, it also seemed quite amazing at times how smoothly he always managed to have the mike which he had ‘randomly’ thrown away earlier on back when he needed it without and problems. There may have been some practicing and preparation at work here.
After Monotonix’ instruments had been cleared away The Thermals came on. Actually we saw them watching part of Monotonix’ show from the stage before and they seemed to be amused by it as well. Of course The Thermals are just great – bringing together what could be the coolest voice and the hottest bassist with great songs.
They played a nice and long set with loads of songs from their various albums and people really enjoyed it. Perhaps the sound (or mixing or whatever) could have been a bit better as I thought a bit of the power I know from their albums or from seeing them two years ago was missing. However, that didn’t spoil things and they really rocked!
