The singer is perched atop the bar. His hair is
shoulder-length, fuzzy, and brown. A mustache the size of a small
banana dominates his face. He is shirtless and his chest hair is thick
like shag carpet. He is squeezing limes into his white briefs, which
are already full of ice, cherries, and a drink that was left unguarded
on the bar. His band is playing. Loud.
Now wait a second—let’s back up a bit here, and put this into
context.
It was a Monday night at the Tube—not exactly the place you’d
think of for a killer concert. But what happened that night wasn’t a
concert. It was a natural disaster that you could dance to. An
earthquake, tidal wave, and hurricane all wrapped into one. And just as
it went off, God tossed in a few sticks of dynamite just to watch them
get whipped around before
the “CRACK!”
But before the storm erupted there were a few moments of calm.
Without a green room, even before changing into their performance
clothes, Monotonix were easy to spot—they were the only ones who
could’ve been from Tel Aviv. They were an Israeli trio of traveling
gypsies.
The mixture is strong, but deceptively simple: guitar (the tidal
wave), drums (the earthquake), and vocals (the hurricane) straight to
the venomous, sweat-stained, earth-shattering, hip-shaking,
boot-stomping point.
Okay, now where were we? Ah yes, the place was packed, the singer
was perched atop the bar.
But he wasn’t the only one thing worth watching. By then the
ridiculously heavy drummer had moved his minimal, stand-up kit into the
crowd. The guitarist was racing from one end of the bar to the other,
his headstock flailing past the faces of the adrenaline-fueled crowd,
one near miss after another.
They tore through song after soulful song; a mix of heavy major
chords, chugging riffs, pulsing changes, washing feedback, wailing
solos, and tight, syncopated pounding. The nearest musical jump-off
would be Federation X, but the Monotonix live performance—which
is part performance art—is something else to behold entirely. Few
things are more visceral.