MUTUAL ADDICTION – LIVE FROM DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL 2014 [REVIEW]
13 June, 2014 – Donington Park, United Kingdom
As a live act, Mutual Addiction were the biggest unknown entity at the hugely popular hard rock festival. Alex and Julia had only performed live together three times previous before the date at Download. But they arrived at the festival with a buzz surrounding their live set together, following the release of their debut album ‘This Is A Wasteland’, the duo have quickly created their own dedicated fanbase as a duo, it’s fortunate that their music together isn’t a carbon copy of their solo work. Nope, as Mutual Addiction, their songs have a much heavier and dirtier rock and roll sound to their own individual work and the heavier elements will no doubt be one of the main pulling points that helped them get a slot at Download 2014, whether they could create a special moment at the festival or not was still to be seen.
The raucous festival crowd welcome ‘Mutual Addiction’ onto the main stage at around 7:30pm and the stage was set from the get-go. The large banner hanging high behind them with the bands logo and a bloodied heart emblazoned on it was the only real change from the previous acts set, four musicians played behind the duo, providing the music and freedom for both Alex and Julia to do their own thing and as both Alex and Julia strutted out towards the centre of the stage they were met with a rather powerful reaction, you have to feel that a lot of the reaction was down to Julia’s mere presence. The blonde-haired rocker was dressed as you’d have anticipated, big dark sunglasses and adorned in leather, Alex on the other hand was slightly less punk in his appearance, he is after all more of a scene kid. Skinny jeans, a black t-shirt and a sleeveless blazer, it seemed to appeal to a large portion of the female audience however.
The band behind them opened up into their first track, ‘Oxygen’, recently announced as their next single, conveniently. Julia starts off singing in her raspy whiskey fuelled voice about her temptations for her former lover, he stage personality has always been uniquely delivered as she regularly brings her hands up and down her body and through her hair as she sings, caressing herself in a seductive manner, her voice matches her image perfectly and as evidenced tonight, it has quite the effect on the men at her concerts. Alex then joins into the fray, his vocals range quite drastically from Julia’s, he hits notes that men just shouldn’t be able to hit and delivers every word with passion. It’s noticeable the chemistry between the two as they trade vocals and begin trading looks with one another throughout.
The band behind them keep things ticking over as they power into ‘Numb the Pain’ and ‘Addicted to Your Poison’, again the style of the songwriting between the two, just seems to lend itself perfectly to live performance, whether it’s real or fake the relationship between the two onstage appears to gather pace quickly and within seconds of the intro to ‘Addicted to Your Poison’ the pair are stood extremely close to one another, looking directly at each other as they trade vocals once more, the lyrics,
“I’m the poison that you need/I’m the mouth that you must feed.” just highlight the passionate nature that they seem to want to put across in their music.
The leather jacket comes off for Julia as the band play into the next tracks, first up is ‘Gothic Angel’ a track about a relationship on the rocks, a relationship where both need more than just the fiery passion that they possess and it’s delivered a little more tenderly than you’d have maybe expected from them. Julia appears to hold a little tighter to the microphone and her attitude is replaced by a slight vulnerability, it shows that the duo can explore a more wider range of emotions in the work and pull it off quite well.
But we’re back to what you’d have come to expect as they power through ‘Bad Girls’ and ‘This Is A Wasteland’, the former again putting Julia’s attitude back into the spotlight, she edges closer to the stage and reaches out towards the front row a few times which gets a huge reaction, as she caresses herself seductively once more before strutting over towards Alex, as he sings she presses her body into his, grinding slightly against him before sliding her hands down his body, she then gets intimately close to him as they trade vocals with one another, the nature of the songs lyrics clearly dictating the onstage delivery of the song.
An unexpected inclusion into the performance is two solo songs, Alex kicks things off with his own ‘Golden Hearts Shine Forever’, singing his own track while Julia, yeah you guessed it, dances seductively and then Alex grabs an electric guitar while Julia performs her own ‘Looking For You’. It’s back to their collaborate efforts for the final run-through of their set, a strong four track finale as they perform ‘We Are Like Vultures’, ‘The Bite’, the slower and emotive ‘Final Moment’ before ending things in style with ‘Bad Influence’.
They certainly left the thrills for the final track, ‘Bad Influence’ is the track that best represents Alex and Julia’s work together, it’s a heavy guitar fuelled rock song with sultry lyrics of destruction and addiction and they clearly put a little more thought into the delivery of the final track of their performance, in total the song lasted eight minutes, four minutes longer than the album version of the track, this was due to the inclusion of pyro’s which fired out from the right and left side of the stage and the unexpected but pleasantly unexpected inclusion of lap-dancers, as around six women dressed in practically nothing took to the stage mid-way through the song and begun grinding enthusiastically on both Alex and Julia, to their credit they managed to keep their composure as the dancers tried their very best to entice both Alex and Julia, making-out with one another and pressing themselves up against the singers, but they played along well and remained on-point throughout the song.
As the song finished both Alex and Julia raised their hands in acknowledgement to the crowd amidst the pyro and shared a quick embrace before the dancers ushered the pair off stage. All in all a rather entertaining performance from a band that you feel still haven’t even remotely gotten started yet. You can’t help but feel that there’s a lot more to come.
Setlist;1. Oxygen
2. Numb The Pain
3. Addicted To Your Poison
4. Gothic Angel
5. Bad Girls
6. This Is A Wasteland
7. Golden Hearts Shine Forever
8. Looking For You
9. We Are Like Vultures
10. The Bite
11. Final Moment
12. Bad Influence 