The Treatment @ Camden Underworld, London

Excellent show by The Treatment, this review was posted on Grapevine's website.

Written by Ryan Whitwell
Saturday 15th December 2012,
 
A mild winter's Saturday I had A quick potter around Camden market for Christmas presents. Oh yeah, I also saw one of the best heavy metal bands around at the moment in the form of The Treatment at Camden Underworld.

Curren kicked off an early start to procedings. Solid with plenty of American style rock about them. The early start of about 6.30 meant the crowd was a little on the thin side but that didn't dampen Curren's spirit and the lack of numbers held up pretty well when faced with some audience participation. The band have a great vibe about them, good upbeat band with a solid set including a cover of Bob Seger's 'Rosalie' which matched their style really well.

Next up on the four band roster were the brilliant Four Wheel Drive. The high rollers were on form once again to cement themselves as one of my favourite bands right now. This was my second Four Wheel Drive gig but this time the band were penned in to the confines of Underworld's stage, so no bar top guitar solos (although that didn't stop one guitarist walking through the crowd riffing like a boss).

I'm not sure why but I always gain an involuntary smile when I hear a Four Wheel Drive track, much like the one I get when AC/DC is played on the radio. I guess my subconscious is so happy this brilliant music exists that my frontal lobe can't hide it. The same thing happened during the headliner's set, but more about them after I mention the third band of the evening.

Vega are a band that I had not seen nor heard before and their style of theatrical vocals and keyboards immediately made me think of that other side of eighties rock. They felt a bit Bon Jovi/Billy Idol but with boyband-esque key changes and vocals. Definitely a vocally focused band and the guitarist from Night By Night was playing along on stage, which was a nice surprise because he is a good guitarist. As the set continued I couldn't shake the image of a an 'attitude' laden film from the mid-eighties where the hero would at some point ride a motorbike for an entire song (probably by Stan Bush) because he had to battle the bully in the big dance tournament to get the girl. It wasn't bad and there were plenty of established fans singing along as I think all of the songs featured  an opportunity to chant the word 'hey' or 'woah' in leu of an extended guitar solo.

After what seemed like an especially long time, The Treatment glided on stage and proceeded to blow the roof off The Underworld and the World's End above it!

If you haven't heard of these young guns from Cambridge then you owe it to yourself to get a dose of The Treatment (Sorry, I promise not to do anymore medical puns). Rounding up what has been an amazing year for the traditional heavy metallers, supporting the likes of Motley Crüe, Kiss and Thin Lizzy both here and in the US. The Treatment powered up their amps and turned everything up to 'awesome' to prescribe some more volts to an already electric Camden crowd (I promise that was the last medical pun).

Playing a bit of their 'This Might Hurt' album and a couple of newer tracks, The Treatment have clearly learned a lot from the masters they have recently supported. The crowd were up for it and all five band members knew it. plenty of fist pumping, arm waving and head banging was going on as the barrage of hard and fast metal blasted into the very core of our beings.

By the end of the set the room was so energetic that a stage invasion ensued as the smothered band played one of my favourites, 'Shake The Mountain', to top off a set full of hit and miss crowd surfing, studded leather jackets and guitar solos and the band just took it all in their stride as if they've been doing it for 50 years.

Ending with a great encore featuring a cover of Saxon's 'Motorcycle Man', the band managed to add themselves to my list of best live bands I've seen this year!

I cannot praise this band enough and sincerely hope they go on for a very long time as we may well be witnessing the start of something very special in a new wave of British heavy metal, and it's just what the doctor ordered (OK, that one was really bad).