Sunday 23/07/06 Metro Riots @ Carling Academy 2, Liverpool

What place does this century have for the blues?  Sure, it’s place in musical history alongside jazz and rock ‘n’ roll is assured but, having been taken to unimaginable extremes by the likes of Hendrix, Page and latterly White, is there anywhere else for it to go?  Metro Riots think so – and, watching them tonight, it’s hard to argue.    

Damo and his band of Boosh-cuts are not doing anything particularly clever, but my God is it big.  Howling their way through harmonica-singed opener ‘Seventeen’, you can almost taste the testosterone as they throw shapes with every lick.  A modest yet very grateful crowd lap this all right up, greeting the one-riff monster ‘Modern Romance’ as if it was The Zep themselves before us. Live, they lack some of the jagged edge of the records, but primal rock ‘n’ roll like this is always better in the tattooed flesh than it is in the living room and tonight is no exception.

The Riots finish with forthcoming single ‘When You’re Gone’, hurtling headlong into the kind of crashing coda that made The MC5 legends.  Then, they thank us and **** off into the night.  And what of the blues?  Apparently, it’s going nowhere without a fight…