By Jase Walker
The cold weather is drawing in and Amsterdam looks gorgeous at night, but I’m not off to see the sights, tonight is a form of stargazing in the form of STARSET. This sci-fi themed proggy metal band have wowed me time and again with their live shows often featuring large screens with space exploration videos all the way to desert planet vistas and dystopian societies with a lyrical undercurrent of awe and fear of technological progress.
On this particular tour they’ve opted to go without a support act and go for a massive two hour set of their biggest ‘bangers. STARSET are quite atypical with their approach in many different ways; I recall my first time seeing them in Manchester Academy 3 and opting for a DnB/Jungle DJ as their opening act for example.
The curtain falls and to say they’ve upped their production game is a complete understatement. A huge screen behind them plays a video introducing the show and I can see one of those spinning hologram screens right at the front of the stage. And are those new space suits?! Oh good god STARSET you have already completely outdone yourselves! The projection at the front presents a hyper futuristic screen resembling a Star Trek screen, this is absolutely bonkers. One of the “screens” seems a bit wonky though, whoops, oh wait, I think that was possibly intentional.
Opening with ‘Unbecoming’ I genuinely don’t know if I’m more enamoured with the song or the outrageous stage production. I have never seen this done before, I have never seen videos played on a screen in front of the band before in this way. I’ve always talked STARSET up as a band that’s stood out to me with their live shows and I figured I’d have an idea of what was going to happen but I never could have anticipated this.
I’ve just noticed they have a live keys player now in addition to the violin and cello player too. Early on is one of my favourites, ‘MANIFEST’. What an absolute monster of a song with its pop ballad verses and groovy chorus. ‘Perfect Machine’ shows another facet of the production as thin purple pillars of light dance across the stage as if to box the band in behind some sort of prison. ‘Frequency’ again ups the ante with their display with the hologram showing distorted waves matching the song and showing the pre-chorus in gigantic red lettering, I genuinely have goosebumps at this point, we’re barely a quarter a through the show and this is already blowing every other production I’ve seen this year out of the water.
The flags are out, it’s time for ‘Trials’, with a bit of a new twist on the verses, but that massive meaty riff post chorus is still there and it makes me gurn every time. It’s also quite wild to me that in addition to this live show, there’s a literal feature film going on as the set moves on. There’s so, so much going on through this show, little wonder they refer to their performances as “demonstrations”, with ‘Infected’ switching gears on the backing video to a sort of neo-50s comic strip sort of video reminiscent of the Fallout games. After ‘Telekinetic’ I think I might be starting to blow my voice out trying to sing along, whoops. ‘Faultline’ is arguably one of their best singalongs too and the crowd screaming the words out didn’t disappoint, although the autocue probably helped a bit.
They’ve even got horizontal beams that imitate a sci-fi electric fence to give an unusual sort of depth to the film on the main screen. The performance takes an odd turn in a way of getting the audience to take part in the rebellion and I suspect this costume change part, and with the “brain link” advert starting, that confirms it. In addition to this they’re also taking down the hologram projection screen which suggests they also want to get a bit more stuck into the crowd. This is the sort of show that genuinely rivals bands like Enter Shikari with a mix of how vivid and busy the show is, there’s seldom a moment where something isn’t happening. Oh, also, it’s not their old spacesuits they’ve switched to, they appear to be more tech-wear cold weather type outfits, I already want one.
Another oldie but huge favourite of mine ‘Echo’, I mean I know they’ve gotta move on at some point but I gotta get what I can. Even as we storm towards the end of the set, the production still has surprises in store with some of the maneuverable lights acting liken Klaxons as they smash through ‘My Demons’. Admittedly I don’t think that ‘toksik’ is a particularly strong song to end on, it’s great but doing an encore with your latest single seems a bit weird to me. This does not diminish this absolutely unreal show by anything though.
I’ve seen a lot of incredible shows this year ranging from barely 100 people to nearly 20k but I don’t think any has come close to this incredible level of technical production. STARSET continue to push the boundaries of what is possible with live shows, even from years ago they wowed me with what they did and they continue to up the ante by an order of magnitude every single time they tour.
There is one small thing in my mind that does bother me: if they’re gonna up the venue size the next time they return, it inevitably means it’s gonna be 013 in Tilburg. Please do a weekend show: I don’t want to miss it!
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