Shame - The Massive Monster Tour
Live in Glasgow
By Luke Laredo
“Let’s make a circle of inner peace, show me your best inner peace circle, Glasgow.” Shame’s frontman Charlie Steen conducts the crowd in The Garage with bravado and self-aware cheek. Sunglasses block the intensity of the stare on his straight face, which is only briefly broken by a grin when a member of the crowd is carried towards the stage and into the arms of the security. After the first ten minutes of their set, this is a common occurrence, much to the chagrin of the security team. What starts as two burly men quickly multiplies to four as people sail towards them at a near constant rate. The aforementioned “circle of inner peace” is only the second of three mosh pits instigated by Steen, as he stirs the crowd from mere head bopping to a frenzy.
We’re in The Garage in Glasgow. A few minutes from Queen Street train station and nestled among dozens of bars and clubs, Garage stands out by being a part-time club and part-time concert venue. The wide open floor happily takes a couple thousand fans, and the stage and sound system project a live act right to the back. Not that you wouldn’t want to be near the stage, especially tonight. I’m with people who haven’t heard Shame before, live or otherwise, so I want this first impression to land well. Unfortunately, it’s a Sunday night (November 16th), and it’s cold and late, so we’re not exactly energetic. Luckily, Shame is one of those bands that make you forget that you’ve got a 9am class tomorrow.
The opening set by Irish band Theatre, with their more ethereal sound and frontwoman Maeve O’Shea’s beautifully haunting vocals, creates an excellent contrast to Shame’s diverse musical ventures in Cutthroat. After proudly declaring that this is their fiftieth straight night on tour, Shame launches into the pulsing ‘Axis of Evil’. The Depeche Mode influence is clear in the pulsing beat and low vocals, at least in the recorded version. On stage, it seems that they can’t contain their energy and the sound booms out, washing the crowd with Steen’s rough vocals. He strategically targets sections of the crowd who aren’t moving as much with his shade-hidden gaze until they get the message to move.
With another two tracks from Cutthroat, ‘Nothing Better’ and ‘Cowards About’, Shame take the piss out of the elite capitalist class, then the unambitious, and finally anyone else who looks at them wrong (“Cowards are people who drink protein shakes / Cowards are people who make you wait”). After this healthy dose of Cutthroat, guitarists Sean Coyle Smith and Eddie Green launch into the signature riff of ‘Concrete’ – one of Shame’s defining songs from their first album Songs of Praise. At this point the crowd loses it, and the first mosh ensues.
Josh Finerty spends more time in the air than on stage as he sprints up and down the stage, bass guitar strap attached by several layers of duct tape. When not lending his voice to the call and response lyrics of Concrete, he makes it a point to keep his feet off the floor as much as he physically can. It’s a spectacle to see, in the moments not spent watching Steen’s hypnotising, self-styled “dad dancing,” wearing nothing but a thin white neck collar and the same wide shades. ‘Tasteless’ follows, and its equally powerful riff and drums cap off the first maelstrom of bodies, as the crowd settles down for ‘Fingers of Steel’. The Food for Worms track is a poignant reflection on seeing depression in those close to you, and reflects ‘Quiet Life’ later in the set, where Shame again shows their range in songwriting. Despite the lower mood and slower tempo, the guitars and Charlie Forbes’s drumming are excellent as always. This gig cemented my opinion that the definitive way to experience Shame is to see them live.
Not to let the mood drop for too long, Steen launches into the high point of the show’s humour. “I know why you come to a Shame show… you want to drink your herbal tea and wear your tweed jackets with elbow patches and go to bed on time… So here’s a song about a motherfucking six pack!” This might as well have sent an electric shock through the floor, judging by the way the crowd reacts. The floor and walls shake, and waves of people surf across the rest to try for a high five from the grinning frontman. The moshing continues through the next tracks; ‘To and Fro’ is reminiscent of Shame’s first two albums, but the electronic edge of Cutthroat is heard throughout. ‘Alphabet’ is a crowd pleaser with its tempo, and the off-kilter ‘Afterparty’ is mesmerising to hear live. Some of the tracks didn’t impress me as much when I’d only heard them on streaming, but seeing the band come together in person makes all the difference. The electronic effects are for the better, and prove John Congleton’s skill as a producer in refining and pushing a band’s limits.
‘Quiet Life’ into ‘Spartak’ marks the show’s emotional high with the lyricism shining through and the perfect amount of strain in the vocals. Then comes the most unique new track, both in its blend of genres and subject matter. The opening lines of ‘Lampião’ are in Portuguese, and its lyrics revere the 20th century Brazilian bandit of the same name. Half sung and half spoken, it’s like a fable of the folk hero and takes inspiration from Brazilian music and culture. Also, one of the crowd surfers wears a football shirt with Lampião on the back and perfectly times his journey to meet the stage as the first chorus starts.
The final few tracks include some of Shame’s best. The tempo is a rollercoaster with ‘Adderall’ into ‘Water in the Well’ then ‘Snow Day’ and Forbes’s cymbals shimmering beautifully. Finally, ‘One Rizla’ brings the energy back up and Cutthroat’s opening track (of the same name) gives Steen an excuse to jump into the crowd himself. The show could not have ended any other way as the crowd roars and the beat of the song carries Shame to the end of their set, as Steen is carried back onto stage. As Finerty tosses his bass in the air between riffs and rolls across the stage, I’m reminded that Shame are in their late twenties, and their act proves it.