From the outset the band put everything into their performance with singer Brian Standeford living up to every rock-frontman cliché but still pulling it off with style. We get twirling microphones, climbing and full-on foot-on-the-monitor rock indulgence. In Standeford the Catheters are blessed with one of the best voices I’ve heard in ages, forget Howlin’ Pete, this guy seems to shred his tonsils to pieces after every line, screaming and yelping his way through each song, and somewhat disturbingly spitting out mouth-fulls of phlegm after every line…
No songs are introduced, indeed the only real banter is when Standeford mocks the shamefully small audience, dismissing them as ‘bored teenagers’, before diving headlong into them during the next song.
Blasting through each song the Catheters rarely slow the pace down, save for the ‘slower’ “Clock on the Wall”, a rolling, feedback ridden number, at times reminiscent of Bleach-era Nirvana. The rest of the time they sound as if the Hives had been brought up in Seattle and forced-fed a diet of testosterone and amphetamines, except they rock even harder than that.
My only criticism is that after a while the songs do tend to sound a little samey, but hey, who needs sing-a-long choruses? Yes, like most of the current crop of ‘garage bands’ coming out of the US they are completely retro and yes they’ve probably heard too many MC5 and Ramones records, but fuck that, The Catheters go all out, playing as though their lives are depending on it, the kind of band you’d love to see in a packed sweaty-room whilst having the best drunken night of your life.
After half an hour of unrelentless rock n’ roll, I’m converted, I’m grinning my head off, my ears are ringing and once again I’ve decided that music is the best thing in the world. Ever. The last words though must surely go to the venue’s manager: “120Db! That’s the loudest band we’ve ever had in here; they all had their fucking amps turned to 11.”
