IQ’s Legendary Christmas Bash 2019 – The Garage, London 6th December 2019

The band host a Christmas show in London each year so I thought it would be a good idea to go along. It was quite hot and crowded in the Garage (a different but no less enchanting venue to where I saw them in September), but it felt a very happy and lovely atmosphere. IQ do not take themselves too seriously and there was a lot of laughing and smiling faces both on stage and in the audience. The band had a curfew and started quite early but played for nearly two and a half hours with a selection of songs both old and new.

 

‘From the Outside In’ is a song I did not think it was one of their best before, but it is powerful and heavy, and I like it a lot more now. I think it was the bass pedals that did it. I’ve said in another review that you can’t have a proper Prog gig without them.

 

‘Sacred Sound’ was the first IQ song I ever heard and remains very special to me and one of my favourite songs by the band. The church organ sound is epic both live and on record and the song was one of the highlights of the evening. I hope to hear other songs from Dark Matter in the future. I could tell that this is one of IQ’s most popular songs and with good reason.

 

‘The Last Human Gateway’ is an IQ song from 1983 and the longest of the night at twenty minutes. It doesn’t feel that long when you hear it live and I think the crowd would have given it a standing ovation if we were not already standing up.

 

‘The Road of Bones’ is probably the best song ever written about a serial killer. I especially love the high octave oriental influenced synth riff. It is both beautiful and brutal live and another very popular song.

 

‘For Another Lifetime’ is one of my favourites from the new album and based on the reaction it got, I am sure it will become a live favourite in at future gigs.

 

‘Further Away’ opens with that beautiful synth arpeggio. It was second of two fifteen-minute songs in succession and comes from the 1993 album, ‘Ever’. Listen closely to the synth solo about half-way through, the delicate picked classical guitar shortly afterwards and the guitar solo shortly after that. A stunning song.

 

Mike Holmes came back on stage for the encore wearing his angel wings and the band played ‘Ten Million Demons’. It has this amazing throbbing synthesized bassline and eerie synth sounds reminiscent of both the Doctor Who theme and Pink Floyd’s ‘One Of These Days’. A fantastic song to end the night on.