Last year’s cancellation of an Acid Mothers Temple at the Empty Bottle was a big disappointment. Since seeing this band back in 2002 at SXSW, I’ve been eager to see them again — especially since I’ve become more familiar with their recordings (though I’ve just heard a fraction of their prodigious discography).
So it was exciting to finally see AMT again. I’m not sure which version of the band this was (Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.? Acid Mothers Temple and the Cosmic Inferno?), or exactly what the differences are. This was a lean, mean version of the band, with just four guys making a ton of noise. There was some fabulous guitar soloing, and several cacophonic moments that brought “Instellar Overdrive”-era Pink Floyd to mind.
Commenting in their broken English on being in Chicago, AMT offered up a couple of fun Chicago pieces of music — a short version of Chicago’s “25 or 6 to 4,” followed later by a chorus of “Saturday in the Park” thrown into one song. And the encore? Steam’s “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye,” the White Sox anthem — or some twisted version of the tune.
The opening band, the Antarcticans, was a pretty good instrumental group. They sounded almost exactly as I’d imagined — big glaciers of guitar riffs.