Triggerfinger at the Komplex Klub - 15 May 2014

If you're in need of an ideal setting for no-frills blues-rock, look no further than the intimate Komplex Klub in Zurich. A bar takes up half the room, pillars are dotted about holding up the low ceiling and the heaving masses make the club feel like you're in a crowded honky-tonk in Nowheresville, Tennessee. The perfect backdrop for Belgian band Triggerfinger, then, one of the finest live bands around.

From the moment they step on stage, their dedicated fanbase goes nuts, mosh pits forming left and right, heads banging to the gritty blues-rock beats. Singer-guitarist Ruben Block cuts a dashing figure with his salt-and-pepper hair, handlebar moustache, slim-fitting black suit and top shirt button open just so. Mario Goossens is a madman on the drums, decked out in an stripy barbershop quartet suit that is sweat-soaked by the second song. Bassist Paul Van Bruystegem remains cool throughout the concert, a big unflappable bear of a man with sunglasses perma-attached to his face.

The trio have been around since 1998, working the circuit in Europe and building a reputation as a fierce live band. They landed a hit with their cover of Lykke Li's I Follow Rivers in 2012. The wider recognition that followed was long overdue. Triggerfinger released their new album By Absence of the Sun in April 2014, which features a continuation and refinement of their sound.

Concert opener Game sets the tone with crunchy bass lines and Led-Zeppelin-esque blues riffs and continues through 2004's On My Knees and 2010's All This Dancin' Around right up to set closer Man Down, a mash-up of Zeppelin's Kashmir and Rihanna's Man Down. While this may sound like the world's most incongruous mix, the song works an absolute treat.

Unlike most stage set-ups, Triggerfinger place the drumkit front and centre and the guitar and bass right beside it. The small stages they seem to gravitate towards can barely contain them: Block is a ball of energy who has to scramble through cables to get to the front and back again, while the rhythm section nearly blows the roof off the venue. It would be interesting to see Triggerfinger soar in a bigger space, but the current cramped conditions do an excellent job of transferring the raw immediacy of blues-rock straight to the audience's hearts. Block asks the crowd if they're feeling ok and someone shouts "Hell yeah!" - a mantra that then gets repeated so often throughout the evening by both audience and band that it becomes the overarching theme of the whole concert. Straightforward and to the point, those two words say it all.

The concert revolves around astonishing ten-minute centrepiece My Baby's Got a Gun, in which the band take multiple risks: they dare to go quiet and the drummer dares to go solo, the latter conjuring up visions of indulgent jam sessions by 70s prog rock bands and an audience in flared jeans going "far out, man". Thankfully, this isn't what happens. The track starts slowly and quietly with a single guitar note plucked over and over again while Block sings at the front of the stage without a microphone. Even the chatty Cathys in the audience stop to take a breath as a hush descends on the room. The song then roars into life as the bass and drums come crashing in, culminating in that extended drum solo by Goossens, while Block and Van Bruystegem each grab a spotlight, clamber up onto wobbly loudspeakers and shine the lights on their drummer. You never saw Robert Plant and Jimmy Page do this with John Bonham. Drum solo over, Block jumps off the loudspeaker and rips his trousers; undeterred, he launches right back into that single note plucked on his guitar before the band end the song with an almighty blues-rock bang. Hell yeah!

Setlist:

Game

Short Term Memory Love

By Absence Of The Sun

And There She Was, Lying In Wait

On My Knees

Perfect Match

My Baby's Got a Gun

Camaro

Let It Ride

All This Dancin' Around

First Taste

Cherry

Encore 1:

Without A Sound

I Follow Rivers

Black Panic

Encore 2:

Man Down

- Anna Wirz