Another year, another Holiday Melée show from The Flatliners! I’m not one for the holidays, but this is a tradition I could get into. After last year’s colossal show with Gob and A Wilhelm Scream, the band returns to Club Soda to close out my 2024 gig calendar.
A typically depressing end-of-year work meal precludes me from getting there early enough for Catbite, but I manage to arrive just as psychobilly mainstays The Creepshow are getting started. Energy levels in the room are not quite where frontwoman Kenda Legaspi would like them to be, as she goads, “Montreal, are you tired? Are you sleepy?!”
Montreal responds accordingly on the very next song, Run for Your Life, as the pit explodes. She incites a huge circle pit for Grave Diggers, which heaves as Sean McNab hammers away at his upright bass while screaming the vocal, before both share vocal duty on set-closer Buried Alive. A great set as always!
Before the show, I’m able to talk to Rory, a member of The Flatliners crew for the last 600–700 shows, at the merch table (shout out to $30 shirts—absolute steal in this day and age!). He tells me that at almost every show he’s done, there’s at least one person that requests Fred’s Got Slacks from their 2004 debut, Destroy to Create.
Requests for this song—and indeed any song from that record—usually fall on deaf ears because the band has kinda distanced themselves from it over the years; it sounds literally nothing like The Flatliners, being so heavily ska-punk. Indeed, not a single song from that record made the setlist at last year’s Melée!
And yet tonight, the Flatliners world is flipped on its head. In celebration of the 20-year anniversary of that record, this year’s Melée features that record in its entirety. As Rory mentions: 20 years, with the same lineup—that’s something to celebrate!
Though he jokes about how one couple had already come by the merch and told him it was their first Flatliners show; tongue-in-cheek, he tells me: “OH MY GOD, THEY’RE GONNA HATE IT!!!”
I’m right down the front by the time the band arrives on stage, and I wonder how long I will last down there. About 10 seconds of the first song, as it turns out. As the pit explodes into life on the aforementioned Fred’s Got Slacks, I scurry off to the safety of the side as bodies flail through the rest of the song and There’s a Problem, which immediately follows.
Frontman Chris Cresswell quickly jokes at the song’s conclusion: “We’re a ska band again. This is confusing for us—we thought we knew who we were!”
Despite the sound being completely different from your average Flatliners show, it’s quickly apparent that NOBODY is hating it, contrary to Rory’s joke. The pit is absolutely nuts from start to finish, with abundant crowdsurfers on every song, and the singalongs are deafening too.
The “Brouhaha” on My Hands Are Tied is especially resonant, while the “Woah-oh” on Macoretta Boozer is about as loud as I’ve ever heard at a punk show for any band!
Chris pays tribute to the crowd midway through: “Montreal has always had our backs in a big way. It’s poetic that we’d start this tour here!” Bassist Jon Darbey seems to be working a lot harder than usual too, as the basslines of these old ska songs like Broken Bones are seemingly much more complicated than recent Flatliners material!
He’s also the Tim Armstrong-like vocal on the outro of Do or Die, which I never knew!
In true reverence for that record, Chris then runs through the acoustic song What the Hell Happened to You hidden at the end of the CD version issued at the time. “The CD fans are the true fans!” he proclaims. For a “hidden” song, it’s clearly not hidden from those in the crowd, who sing and clap along with gusto.
To close out the show, the band returns to their more recognizable material, plucking one song each from five different records. The singalong for Eulogy is as loud as anything that came before, as is the ear-splitting “YEAHHHHH!” that opens Hang My Head.
Hordes of crowdsurfers take to the skies for Caskets Full, which merges seamlessly into the classic Rat King and its triple vocals from Chris, Jon, and guitarist Scott Brigham.
Count Your Bruises rounds out the 70-minute set with spectacular stadium theatrics, twin foam guns at the sides of the stage unloading their contents onto the rabid crowd for a triumphant conclusion.
It’s another successful Melée in the books, and already I can’t wait for next year!
Setlist
- Intro
- Fred’s Got Slacks
- There’s a Problem
- Public Service Announcement
- Bad News
- My Hands Are Tied
- Gullible
- Scumpunch!
- I Am Abandoned
- Macoretta Boozer
- Broken Bones
- Quality Television
- Do or Die
- What the Hell Happened to You
- Eulogy
- Hang My Head
- Caskets Full
- Rat King
- Count Your Bruises
Review – Simon Williams
Photos – Alex Distaulo
