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Review: 'L7/ TREASON KINGS'
'London, Kentish Town Forum, 13th Sept 2016'   


-  Genre: 'Punk/New Wave'

Our Rating:
This is L7's second European tour since getting the classic line-up back together and this show is the last date on the UK leg of the current tour. Ironically, it's taking place about 50 yards from the location of the band's first London headline show next door at the Bull & Gate pub back when it used to have bands on every night.

We arrived early enough to see all of Treason King's support set and soon wondered if they'd seen any other bands from Leeds. To be honest, they were pretty much a fourth or fifth rate Pulled Apart By Horses at best and they rate as the second worst band I've heard from Leeds this year.

The band's main problem was the singer's voice had no power and they haven't figured out how to get the soundman to cover this up with lots of reverb or echo so that no matter how decent the guitars sounded against the weedy vocals were almost instantly annulled.

They had one song that sounded like an attempt at being the new Shed Seven and failing miserably and also a piss poor song about Robin Hood that shows they have never heard the incredible Bob Franks album about Robin. They certainly wouldn't have bothered with this pile had they done so. They may as well have covered the theme tune it would have been preferable.

They might improve with time but on this showing I doubt I'll be hearing anything more from Treason Kings and no I didn't take one of the free download codes they were giving away it was way too over-priced. Go figure.

Still The Town & Country club wasn't almost sold out on a Tuesday night for the support act but for the legendary live beast that is the classic line-up of L7 who opened with a raw and raucous Death Wish to get everyone going. They then went straight into Andres who they are still apologising too after all these years. They sounded great but if anything a little bit too spot on.

Still everyone sang along to Everglade and Monster was greeted like the hit it was back in the day. First time round when they played Scrap it was like a signal for mass crowd surfing. Well I saw none of that this time but instead Jennifer and Donita both had big grins while they were playing it and singing about that skinhead called Scrap.

Fuel My Fire slowed things down a bit and felt quite controlled before they let rip on a One More Thing that really felt like it was still spitting bile at us. Then we got to the bit of the set many of us didn't want to get too - yep they were playing something off of The Beauty Process: Triple Platinum and yes I Need still doesn't cut it with the rest of the band's material and should be omitted in my opinion.

It was back to more classic material with Slide lifting things back up a bit before they had a good go at Crackpot Baby before they made us listen to Must Have More: another one from the dog that was The Beauty Process. Sorry but that album stunk and the songs still don't come close to needing re-visiting. I'd rather hear stuff from the first album. They closed the set with Drama: a bit like leaving us with a damp squib as the song barely worked first time round and was pretty flat like this too.

Still they did enough to get an encore and came back to storm through Freak Magnet and the always brilliant Shove before a decent version of Shirley and the song that gets ever longer as the years go by as the bands Shitlist gets longer and longer. Damn it sounded great and had a good amount of distortion at the end as they left us wanting more.

They came back for a second encore to prove we weren't drowning in American Society, oh no, we were all singing along to it instead. Then they unleashed the biggest UK hit Pretend We're Dead that had everyone singing as did the show closing Fast & Frightening to make sure we all left smiling.

If they come back for a third re-union tour I hope they can wheel out a couple of songs from their debut album and forget the Beauty Process but that might just be my taste. Either way they are still well worth seeing live if you get the chance.
  author: simonovitch

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