The fist time I saw Amplifier was supporting Oceansize, and they (almost literally) blew me away and it left me with a taste for more. And so when it transpired that the mighty Mancunian power trio were playing in Leeds, I figured this was a must-see gig.
Alas, before Amplifier took to the stage, there were a couple of less than brilliant supports: Charlie Barnes, a loop-pedal merchant with a terrible line in end-of-pier comedy patter, and Rise to Addiction, who sound exactly how the name would suggest: ever-so-earnest, full-on, big-haired fretwankery. I may be getting old and jaded, but not nearly as much as this melodic metal sub-Metallica guff.
Still, Rio’s offers a decent range of real ales (albeit in bottles and at prices that are anything but bargain basement), so I was able to sink a Bombadier by way of a warm-up for the main even.
Amplifer don’t indulge in any kind of posturing. They’re all about the music – and all about the volume. Set opener ‘Motorhead’ didn’t quite achieve the bass vibrations that rattle the larynx that I’d experienced on that first occasion. There were a few technical issues through the course of the and a slightly botched ending here and there, suggesting that this wasn’t their best night, but when the band did hit their stride and crank it up to eleven, they showed that they’re a truly awesome live act.
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Yes, they’re as proggy as hell, with space travel and UFOs and the like being the most frequent lyrical topics, and the middle eights tend to be middle forties and more. But there’s no experimental fiddling filling out the lengthy tracks (11 songs in a 90-minute set): instead it’s wall to wall galactic scale riffage, the sound driven by a stadium-sized bass sound that thunders like a rocket’s engines at takeoff.
The set draws heavily on their self-titled debut, which remains, in my opinion, their strongest work to date, but there are a couple of new numbers that are likely to appear on the forthcoming album that stand up well beside the older material. They close with a stonking version of ‘Glory Electricity’ and leave the stage in a boom of bass feedback. Belting.
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