PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Tuesday saw the second night of this tour, and the first ever Scottish date for Aussie rockers Massive, whose feet have yet to touch the ground after a flight from Oz, a drive to Newcastle, a gig and a drive to Glasgow. A healthy diet of Newcastle Brown Ale and loud guitars is all that’s keeping them going, and judging by Tuesday’s gig, it’s all they need. The O2 ABC 2 isn’t a large venue, but lots of people were there nice and early to see Massive kick things off just after 7pm. Some people had come specifically to see them, having waited a couple of years for the opportunity. Chatting to fans before the gig it seems that the band have built up a solid base of people who were dying to see them, probably in large part thanks to the sterling work Earache Records do on their behalf. As they took to the stage wearing Andy Murray masks and launched into Burn the Sun the crowd, bar a few diehard fans at the front, hung around the seating/bar area. Singer Brad was having none of it. He told them if the band could travel from Australia, the crowd could travel a metre forward to the front of the stage. They did, and half an hour later they were singing along and cheering everything the band did. The set list was taken from the bands debut album Full Throttle and they went at every track with an intensity and energy that the crowd really picked up on and appreciated. Dancefloor and One by One really had the crowd singing along and the band told me they were amazed at the reception they received. As one fan told me, “They were good. They were loud!” If they keep on getting a reception like this, and playing with such a ferocious energy it will not be long before Massive are back over here playing headline gigs.
Next up were Buffalo Summer. The crowd died down a bit after Massive, as people drifted off to the bar, but they soon got everyone interested and the crowd in front of stage grew throughout their set. From opening track A Horse called Freedom they played a great set, largely taken from their eponymous debut album. New single Down to the River was brilliant, and got a great reaction from the crowd, by this time becoming more and more involved in the set. The band did a good job of involving the crowd, chatting between tracks and generally playing so well that the crowd grew and grew and got more enthusiastic. Buffalo Summer are another band I’ll look forward to seeing headlining in the near future, they’re definitely worth a listen and I can’t recommend enough that you look them up.
So to headliners The Treatment. I would have hardly recognised them. This is a band who are undergoing a serious image change. I don’t know if they felt they’d hit a ceiling and had to change their image, but gone is the long hair and denim that put them into the same bracket as their support acts, and it’s been replaced with short hair, aviator glasses and leather gloves(?) It’s not a criticism as such, it just seems to me when a band as a whole changes its image so drastically they must be searching for a new audience, maybe a younger, less musically educated audience who are more interested in image. There are definitely changes afoot, which explains why this has been named the “Second Bite” tour. That said, a lot of the fans who turned up on Tuesday looked like they’d been following the band from the early days and seemed to really enjoy the set, which took tracks from the whole of their back catalogue. Highlights were Drink Fuck Fight and Shake the Mountain from 2011’s This Might Hurt, right through to new single The Outlaw, where just for a moment everything went a little bit country. Overall it was a well received set, but in my opinion The Treatment should be playing bigger venues by this point in their career. Maybe the image change will move them towards that, maybe not, but if nothing else it shows they are willing to try anything to progress so I wish them luck.
In all, for a Tuesday night a decent sized crowd turned out for this gig. The Treatment put on a good show for their fans, but as a neutral I have to say Buffalo Summer might be one of the best unsigned bands I’ve seen, and band of the night were openers Massive who have huge things ahead of them.
Links: www.massiveoz.com, www.buffalosummer.net, www.facebook.com/TheTreatmentOfficial
