‘People of a nervous disposition…. People with heart trouble…. Pregnant women…’, says the sign by the scary looking rollercoaster with all the loops, ‘should not embark on this ride’. You scan the list of those in danger and see that ‘slightly rotund fop’ isn’t on there and you go for it.
Tonight, The Cooper Temple Clause are like that very white-knuckle ride; a sensory assault at breakneck speed which leaves your brain so paralysed that before you know it, its all over and your gasping in an adrenalin fuelled haze. Unlike an amusement park though, there isn’t a warning sign or safety harness in sight and it’s so loud it feels like an appendectomy.
As the seizure inducing strobes bake the faces of the foolhardy souls jammed against the front barrier, the only word of caution is from the band themselves; ‘Heat plus force equals danger!’ informs Didz, inventing an equation to quell the heaving masses. It makes little difference.
‘Panzer Attack’ comes on like, well, a Panzer attack, ‘Let's Kill Music’ strips enamel from teeth while ‘Promises, Promises’ is Oasis when they were ballsy upstarts. And then there’s the quieter ones. ‘Blind Pilots’ chugs like an impatient Formula One car waiting to explode from the pits while ‘Music Box’ is the eye of an apocalyptic storm.
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In this form they’re like a waltzer-whirling gypsy, inducing nausea and pleasure in equal measure, you want them to stop but when they do you want more. Luckily they indulge.
‘Film Maker’ and ‘Been Training Dogs’ convince more now than when they first aired while ‘Who needs accidents when you’ve got me’ sounds eerily prophetic during the relentlessly ferocious ‘Who Needs Enemies’.
This is the performance of a band who have grown up, a band who have made the transition from experimental first album to difficult second and lived to tell the tale. It's also the performance of a band sticking two cold fingers up at the so called brit-rock revolution, which, lets face it, isn’t new – it started the day the Cooper Temple Clause picked up guitars.
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