Live Review: Starset - O2 Kentish Town Forum, London 03/03/2023
It’s been many a moon since Starset had been over to the United Kingdom. The part rock-band, part auditory-and-visual experience outfit always a promise a hell of a show, and this latest London demonstration promised to be no different.
Starset, for those who aren’t aware, are a collective. Founded by Dustin Bates — who has a Masters in Avionics Engineering and had started his PhD in electrical engineering before dropping out to focus on Starset (no relevance to the gig, just really damn cool) — the Starset Society has a perhaps grandiose but certainly apt and necessary mission to create awareness of how science and technology are changing our present and near future, both positively and negatively; and, as a theme, it’s only going to get more urgent, poignant and significant, particularly given how medicine, technology and political and social uses of social media have altered the global landscape over the past three years. Videos about brainwaves, depictions of the possible futures, discussions of space travel — it’s all pretty par for the course.
But first — a hooded figure, masked, walks on stage, his head bowed and his shoulders heavy. With his mask flashing red, an AI turned flesh incarnate, Smash Into Pieces had arrived. Bursting straight into Wake Up, thunderous drums rocked the venue as Chris Adam’s silky-smooth voice slid over the already-nearly-packed venue. With both Smash Into Pieces and Starset having done meet and greet VIP experiences, the front five or so rows had already been crammed full of the most passionate fans, almost swooning with the excitement of being at the barrier, ready to immerse themselves in the controlled chaos that Smash Into Pieces had to offer. And, as it turns out, controlled chaos was about right; with electronic bass pervading half of the set, piercing through the choreographed showmanship of the Swedish outfit — particularly in Let Me Be Your Superhero — the entirety of their thirty minutes on the London stage was an auditory assault, in only the best of ways.
Cascading cubes of LEDs, giving the set a sort of virtual surrealism, meant there was a lot of visual trickery going on too. Funnily enough though, the biggest reaction from the crowd — male, female and other — was when guitarists Benjamin Jennebo and Per Bergquist stripped off their vests to reveal their admittedly impressive physiques; it became nearly impossible to know which of the senses to focus on, which felt almost like an ironic harbinger of what was to come given Starset’s reputation.
Smash Into Pieces provided a brilliant start to the night and a fantastic set, if one that at times felt a little too rehearsed, lacking a slight bit of the urgency that they might otherwise have had. However, tight instrumentals, fantastic vocals (and the odd guttural growl!), and one hell of a light show — especially for a support! — meant that their incredible half an hour felt much too short.
With a curtain being raised, ready for Starset to appear, the anticipation could only grow. The same could be said for the crowd — clusters of metal t-shirts interspersed with a smattering of steampunk-esque jackets and an amount of face masks practically unseen since the pandemic strewn across the rammed O2 Kentish Town Forum, barely leaving room to breathe, let alone move. And, as a flickering began to strobe across said curtain, it was time. The American flag was the first thing to appear, before flitting to the broken star logo practically synonymous with the band; patriotic and proud. Until the smoke began to appear anyway, creeping in, both virtual and real, encroaching on the symbols like a dark fog enveloping some long-forgotten, fantastical land. A very cinematic start, but what else could you expect?
Oh yeah, music — which Starset happily delivered, flying straight into Transmissions’ ‘Carnivore’. As the strings began to pierce the haze, silhouettes began to form on the curtain, grand, imposing figures that seemed to dwarf the stage, before, finally, the curtain fell, the crowd screamed, and the show began.
The word ‘show’ is often used to describe a band — after all, it’s practically synonymous with ‘gig’ and just means one less repetitive word. However, with Starset, there’s genuinely no truer word. It’s a show. It’s an experience. It’s, to use their term, a ‘demonstration’. It’s even split into two parts, with a mini-interval between them!
Interestingly, the halves seem to broadly mirror the two paths that humanity can take going (hopefully far-) forward — the first half is pure dystopia, the band bedecked in what seemed almost like medical gowns-turned-rags, the stage full of harsh lights, with openers ‘Carnivore’ and ‘MANIFEST’ bleeding a sanguine glare straight out of an apocalypse, the anthemic ‘TRIALS’ seeing frontman Dustin Bates waving a flag through the smoke — a modern day Enjolras trying to turn the tide — and the mighty ‘ICARUS’, backlit by blinding and scorching yellow lights, seeming almost 4D as a microcosm of ‘flying too close to the sun’. ‘Monster,’, meanwhile, with Bates delivering some strained screams, seemed almost like a dire warning of what could happen.
The fantastic end of the electronic-prog wonder of ‘It Has Begun’, halfway through the set, marked the flip. This flip, however, was interesting in and of itself: a six-minute break exactly halfway through the set, marked by a jaunty — if sinister — little video about brain waves. The time, denoted by a countdown on the screen, enabled the band to catch their breath and change costumes — and, coincidentally, also allowed music writers to furiously catch up on their notes!
Yet even the jovial video, which would have been perfectly suited for an unnamed Charlie Brooker series, couldn’t escape the end: ‘Experience everything’, the cheery voiced narrator concluded, before a sense of degradation and decay crept in, as if an old film reel had been set alight, or almost any horror movie of the past twenty years had taken to life. As warranted as the time out was, however, and as interesting as the band had tried to make it, the crowd soon grew discontent. Mumbles became rumbles, and muted whispers became happy conversations — until, of course, the countdown ticked to zero, eventually transitioning into a radio broadcast about space.
This, of course, led straight into Vessels’ ‘Satellite’. Full of synth and an easily picked up chorus, the crowd was loud, as if the room wanted to reach one itself by sheer volume. ‘Satellite’ also saw the band’s re-introduction, now wearing their iconic spacemen outfits — less dystopian and more fantastical, aeronautical escape.
A few tracks, particularly in this second half, did seem to suffer a little from attempting to do too much however, and the following track, ‘Ricochet’, was an offender. Leaning heavily into bass-fuelled synths, the vocals were often drowned out, slightly souring what is otherwise a slow, contemplative, beautiful ballad (in typical Starset fashion of course). Yet for the odd misstep, the band still excelled. Take ‘Infected’, for instance. Written a year before the pandemic, the band had almost decided not to put it on the record — ‘it seemed cheesy’, Bates joked; ‘but you guys seem to enjoy it, so that’s cool!’ And thank god they did, because it’s such a fun one live, with electronic flourishes going hand in hand with heavy riffs, actionable choruses — ‘put your hands up and run’ — and a little pause before instrumental explosions giving everyone the chance to draw a breath and hold it. Similarly, ‘THE BREACH’, full of heavy drums and soaring vocals, all underpinned by rough and ready riffs, perfectly showcased the band’s strengths.
‘Die For You’, meanwhile, gives the set a slightly softer side; the sharpness of the melodies and the lightly-smothering synths cut with belted, emotional choruses and a poignant and powerful sense of devotion.
This dichotomy, heavy into light, can be seen into the following duo, ‘DEVOLUTION’ into ‘EARTHRISE’. ‘DEVOLUTION’, about when conflict becomes less about fighting for right and wrong or finding truth and understanding but more an inherent need to win — is comfortably the heaviest track in the set, some guttural screams perfectly slotted in towards the end, before the contemplative, almost awe-struck wonder of ‘EARTHRISE’, with the world brought into perspective.
And then, finally, inexorably, it was time for the final song: ‘My Demons’. It would be remiss to suggest that ‘My Demons’ is Starset’s ‘one song’, mainly because it does such a disservice to the rest of the catalogue, yet… it sort of is. But what a song — from the first second, from the orchestral arrangements backing the song up and even just the showmanship of drummer Adam Gilbert at the back of the stage to Bates’ soft vocals and the resoundingly triumphant chorus, My Demons just doesn’t miss a mark. Bates even got the time to conduct the crowd, twirling his fingers for volume, standing at the barrier for reach and just generally solidifying Starset’s status for the night as the six on stage belted out the iconic song and finished the soon-to-be iconic show.
Notably, it was also quite refreshing for a band to do their set and go, without either ‘the surprise’ of an encore or making the point of saying that you’re not going to do an encore — it made the show all feel a little more immersive and impermanent, despite perhaps the tremendous number of phones trying to record every second of the roughly 90 minute gig.
Both Starset and Smash Into Pieces were phenomenal: phenomenally good, phenomenally captivating and just phenomenally fun. Let’s hope it doesn’t take three more years for a London demonstration…
Words by James O’Sullivan
Photography by Dave Curtis
