Gig review: Extreme at The Piece Hall, Halifax
Four decades into their career, the Boston rockers bring their brash fusion of glam and funk to bear on Halifax, complete with a defining ballad and a heartfelt tribute finale.
“This is my favourite part of the night,” Extreme guitarist and de-facto spokesman Nuno Bettencourt informs the crowd halfway through the group’s summertime show at The Piece Hall. Perched on a stool near the front under low lights, an acoustic model in his hands, he offers up a sly grin. “It’s because I get to sit down. When you reach 59, sitting down is like having a really good orgasm!”
It seems faintly ridiculous to consider the Portuguese-American is comfortably past the mark to qualify him for Saga membership here, such is his beguilingly lithe form both on a physical and musical level. Furthermore, it feels plausibly terrifying that we’re the better part of four decades on from the breakthrough of the Boston-born hard rockers, whose brash fusion of swaggeringly fun glam chords over a riotous funk underchassis was ultimately dwarfed somewhat by the soft longevity of an atypical acoustic ballad.
The group are ostensibly here still touring behind their latest album, and first in fifteen years, the redundantly titled Six, but this performance also doubles as an unexpected celebration for their most successful effort too, sophomore record Extreme II: Pornograffiti, which turns thirty-five this very night. Frontman Gary Cherone leads a birthday chorus for both it and their front-of-house man halfway through the night, and their audience - mostly middle-aged and curiously clad in a slew of Iron Maiden tees – are only happy to join in the festivities.
Dressed akin to pirates who discovered only new romantic and hair metal records among their vinyl booty, Extreme’s ace has always been Bettencourt, a virtuoso whose skill and tone often takes the indulgences of a rock-and-roll show and turns them on their head through sheer force of will. Vintage cuts such as Decadence Dance and Rest in Peace benefit immensely from his musicality; newer material such as Thicker Than Blood too retains his gift for astutely intelligent riffage.
More Than Words, inevitably, arrives an hour in, though not before Bettencourt and Cherone hit up a snippet of Stairway to Heaven with trollish boomer delight. But further surprises away after Get the Funk Out closes the main show, with a tribute medley to the late Ozzy Osbourne giving the guitarist a final chance to channel his inner Randy Rhodes. “Surreal,” he intones. Perhaps – but nevertheless a throwback triumph.