ninehertz

Alabama Thunderpussy's first trip across the pond - I'm totally psyched for this gig, ready to lose my hearing for a few days, and to be nursing a sore neck! So I'm a little taken aback when we get into Rock City and find there's only about 15 people there and there's not going to be any support bands tonight. Pretty amazing how few people are into ATP, given they are one of the more accessible bands of the "stoner" genre. Waiting around for about half an hour drinking "Cool Bitter" and listening to something that sounds like Electric Wizard blasting out the speakers, ATP make an appearance! But they walk through the "crowd" and outside, off to the pub it seems.

Another half an hour, and about 10 more people have turned up, and ATP finally hit the stage. The first couple of songs I don't recognise (most probably "River City Revival" stuff), and then they start playing the new stuff off "Fulton Hill" - "Wage Slave", "Three Stars" and "Bear Baiting" all go down well with the 30-strong crowd. A couple of songs from "Staring at the Divine" make an appearance, "Motor-Ready" sounding as ferocious as ever, despite the change of vocalist and a solid performance of "Ol'Unfaithful". The set list is pretty varied, switching in between quiter more melodic songs, to heavier more crushing stuff that is more familiar with ATP. They close the set (with warning from Weills "This one's fucking long") with the epic new track "Struggling for Balance" clocking in at over 10 minutes. With everyone wanting more, ATP come back on with an encore of Rainbow's "Man on the Silver Mountain" much to the love of the classic rock fans.

Overall, a fantastic gig, ATP delivering the goods well and truly. They should be back in Spring-time over here...