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Review: Buckcherry/The Treatment/Rubikon, Thekla
“We are so fucking jetlagged.” Boston’s Rubikon have been going for a couple of decades but just set foot on UK soil for the very first time to play a short set of grunge-inflected hard rock aboard the good ship Thekla. They certainly manage to summon up a fair bit of energy despite their depredations and go down well with the early birds before, presumably, toddling off for a nice lie down and a long kip.
Anyone who likes to rock will have seen The Treatment at least a couple of times over the last decade or so. For a long time, you never knew exactly what you were going to get as these bottom-of-the-bill regulars chopped and changed styles – musical and sartorial – so frequently; a process that reached its nadir when they turned up to support Airbourne at the Academy freshly shorn and wearing matching outfits like a harder rockin’ sixties Beat Boom act. But they finally turned a corner with the recruitment of charismatic vocalist Tom Rampton – a rock star-in-the-making of the old school.
is needed now More than ever
This being the first night of the tour, the bands are eager to check one another out and make a big impression. Virtually everyone seems to have an AC/DC song as their intro these days. The Treatment opt for Highway to Hell and soon roar in to their own catchy Let It Begin. They’ve clearly brought a sizeable audience of their own and really go for it with an infectious headbanging frenzy. The headliners could be forgiven for feeling rather nervous.
Next up, they unveil a brand new song, which takes them in a different direction. Inevitably, there’s a slight whiff of calculation about Back to the 1970s, which namechecks Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Roxy Music (“I was born too late!” howls Rampton), but it’s a cracking footstomper that’s guaranteed to appeal to their younger fans while raising a smirk among those of us who can (just about) remember the seventies. They’re not above lifting a ZZ Top riff here and an AC/DC one there, but The Treatment are finally developing a personality of their own and those dreams of world domination no longer seem quite so far-fetched.
Like Skindred and Thunder, LA’s Buckcherry go for Thunderstruck as their AC/DC intro before hitting their glorious cocaine rocker Lit Up. Like The Treatment, they’re no strangers to the lure of an AC/DC riff, and just to bring things full circle it’s worth remembering that Angus and Malcolm Young were keen students of . . . Chuck Berry.
Timing is crucial to rock success and you can’t help feeling that if these sweary rockers had formed a decade earlier and gone head-to-head with Guns n’ Roses they’d be playing much bigger venues today. On the other hand, a sweaty sold-out club is the best place to experience this music (they played the Trinity and Academy on previous visits) and the well-drilled quintet certainly seem delighted to be here. It’s not long before wiry, heavily tattooed frontman Josh Todd has whipped off his shirt and started shimmying.
Buckcherry songs tend to be fairly concise and there’s no flab in the presentation, which means they’re able to fit a strong selection from most of their ten albums into a celebratory, career-spanning set.
Their UK record label Earache, whose early roots are in hardcore punk, must be delighted to hear them return to the punky Somebody Fucked With Me (“Fuck the system/Fuck the lawyers . . . Fuck the country/Fuck religion”) from 2014’s Fuck EP. There’s also room for that unexpected mid-career megahit Sorry – a decidedly unconventional power ballad. Perhaps rather unnecessarily given the explicit lyrics, Todd introduces Porno Star as being about “a big dick motherfuckin’ porno star”.
That reverential, hard-rockin’ cover of Bryan Adams’s Summer of 69 also serves to underline that this is a band who really don’t give a shit about musical fashion or concepts of coolness.
There’s no let up in the tempo all the way to set-closer Crazy Bitch, which takes detours into the likes of Bad Girls and Proud Mary before doubling back on itself. “Don’t ever stop fucking me, Bristol!” shrieks Todd. Well, since you put it like that, sir. A two song encore concludes with the singalong Say Fuck It, leaving us all completely . . . fucked.
Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: January 2024
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