22 June 2003, Camden Underworld, London, UK

Review by Ryan Harkin

The Underworld in Camden is buzzing early on. There are 3 support bands tonight but I only caught the start of Murder One. Their sound was a mess so I went back to the bar. In the sound check, the band shouted to the engineer "Are you happy with that?", "Yes" came the reply from the house engineer. God knows why because you can't distinguish a single instrument. The Underworld has an OK sound system and it CAN be made to sound good. I saw Overkill there last year and their sound was crystal clear.

I got into place before Prong hit the stage with Cut Rate, quickly followed by For Dear Life. The crowd at the front were jumping right from the start: London love Prong, even on a wet Sunday evening. Prove You Wrong and Third From The Sun calm things down a little before Beg To Differ causes an almighty stir. The new songs Entrance Of The Eclipse, Inner Truth and Detached (?) go down well. Have some of these people been downloading illicit MP3s?!? Don't tell Kuntlicka! He'd go off like a Tasmanian Devil.

I find out afterwards that, if you weren't getting pure stage sound as I was, Prong's sound was as bad as Murder One's. There were no guitars to be heard from the centre of the venue and the vocals, as is often the case, are lacking from everywhere else. This is a shame, because if you walked off the street to hear a band sounding like that, you wouldn't go out and buy their album.

Prong always makes up for shortcomings with the venue by putting on a great show. Tommy is a born frontman and the whole band milk the crowd; when they want us to jump, they jump too and they give it everything they've got. After the show, I quickly run over to the side of the stage to steal Monte's set list - my web site wouldn't be complete without it! The inconsiderate bastard has put footprints all over it (what was he thinking?) and as I am trying to unstick it from the floor, he presses a pick into my hand. I might have to get a restraining order to stop him from hassling me soon.

After the show, the grumpy Underworld staff ushered us out into the rain and I knew instantly: I shouldn't have left my sunroof open.