Las Vegas Weekly

March 27, 2009 · 8:48 AM

Monotonix: Now that’s putting on a show

By Spencer Patterson

Monotonix

Photo: Aaron Thompson

It’s a safe bet no one present at the Bunkhouse Thursday night will ever forget what they witnessed, no matter how much they might have had to drink.

Israeli trio Montonix eclipsed the wild havoc raised during last year’s same-venue tour stop (my top-ranked concert from 2007, no less)—taking their performance onto the Bunkhouse bar, outside onto 11th Street and, quite literally, into the faces of the small but spunky crowd in attendance. “This is the coolest show I’ve ever booked,” promoter Patrick “Pulsar” Trout said, and he’s booked hundreds of all shapes and sizes.

The bluesy garage-rockers made the night memorable before they really even began, as singer Ami Shalev and drummer Haggai Fershtman teamed for a bare-chested, two-man handstand/pyramid as guitarist Yonatan Gat soloed to open the set. Over the next hour-plus, Shalev proceeded to: shower the gathering with water; writhe on the floor; moon the audience while placing his microphone against his bare bottom (“I feel bad for the next band that has to use that mic,” remarked Bunkhouse sound man Mike Weller); stand on the shoulders of fans as he beat a drum; hoist Weekly contributor C. Moon Reed to the front of the room, where he licked her face; and drag Fershtman’s drum set all over the joint, from the floor where Monotonix began to the top of the bar (to the bewilderment of a first-night-on-the-job bartender) to the sidewalk in front of the venue and then to an adjacent parking lot (“I feel like I’m in a parade,” one woman commented as she followed the group out the door) and back inside, where, like last year, they closed atop the half-wall separating the floor from the seating area.

The music? Well, that actually is sort of difficult to remember, given everything else going on at the time. It was loud, pretty heavy and instrumentally impressive, though no one “song” stood as anything other than a vehicle for the band’s delirious mayhem.

The bottom line: If you ever get the chance, this is one act you absolutely need to see, see being the operative word.

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