Gig review: Massive Attack at Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne 11th August, 2026

Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love Massive Attack.

Not only is their music timeless and ageless, they have left an imprint on the souls and hearts of so many people. Mezzanine is their seminal album of 1998 that contained the worldwide hit song that most people will recognise – Teardrop.

Who is Massive Attack?

Before the gig I went to get my hair done and the Zoomer lass doing my hair had no idea who Massive Attack was. This was a rude awakening that such a band is no longer well-known and it also made me feel old (which is a relatively new feeling and one I am still grappling with). Asking her what music she liked and she told me country music and Ed Sheeran. This was a level of deep cringe I wasn’t prepared for, but I tried to not show it in my face.

If you don’t know who Massive Attack is then this is a great introduction into why they are completely unique. Their music is an iconoclastic blend of dark Dub, Reggae, Hip-hop and Ambient – in other words – Trip-hop. When I was young, I loved a lot of the Trip-hop, Rap, Techno, Trance, House and Drum & Bass and these tastes continue even now.

Anyway about the gig itself. It was bewitching and hypnotic and did not disappoint at all. It was just as sonically satisfying as their albums Blue Lines, Protection and Mezzanine are, but with added layers of complexity to the intensity of the music. The visual storytelling of the live experience was a powerful addition to their already complex, velvety and haunting sound.

The visual display was not simply a background jumble of randomness but was the real centrepiece. Visual storytelling and messaging were spot-on in capturing the Zeitgeist of our muddled and deeply troubling times.

Whenever an artist delivers a political message at a concert, I am unclear of the cut-through with other people. I wonder if they feel it as profoundly as I do?

Massive Attack’s political messaging is strongly anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-colonial, anti-racist, anti-Zionist stance. They have a pro creativity and a brutal pro-reality stance instead. This adds texture and depth to their mesmeric iconic music.

On looking out at the vast sea of people in Melbourne, I wondered do they care or are they indifferent to Massive Attack’s political provocations? Are they happy to simply go to an event, not think and go home?

With Massive Attack this was never going to be an option. This is music to make every single person there stop and think deeply about their extremely vulnerable position in our emerging, very real and quite frankly terrifying world of hyper-surveillance, hyper-corporatisation, militarised violence and hyper-concentrated media landscape. Yes – all of those fucked up topics that nobody ever wants to discuss, not in polite company and certainly not in the media.

Shoring up a collective response to the level of power-grabbing, corruption and fuckery is also hard for many face (grown lazy as we are on a Western diet of wealth and ease combined with fear) to stomach: underground resistance and revolt.

Before today, I don’t think anyone has accurately summarised the future we all stand to inherit as a result of the increased AI corporatisation, AI militarisation and AI surveillance – death, chaos and destruction, there I fucken said it! Terrifying innit!

Massive Attack and their awesome audiovisual storytelling have managed to encapsulate all of the above and infuse the whole experience with a disturbing, signal-smashing, restless energy. Bringing terror, awe, beauty and wonder into a live show is no small feat. And so it was a true masterpiece of immersive art.

When listening to a Massive Attack album, especially Mezzanine, one gets the sense of entering through a mirror darkly, into a hyper-real, often brutal reality of the world.

In saying how truly amazing it was, I feel so sorry for those who couldn’t get a ticket. This amount of algorithmic gymnastics my partner had to go through to get the tickets was an absolute miracle.

The big irony: the event was a algorithmically complex and hyper-surveilled

There is an enormous irony to this event that I would like to unpack for you. Massive Attack’s gig showcased the terror of surveillance, as the detailed faces of people in the crowd were tracked and projected live onto the big screen.

The venue, Rod Laver Arena employs extremely detailed and intricate facial recognition and data services courtesy of Palantir (yes those c*nts, the global techno-military complex used quietly and precisely to kill children in Gaza and elsewhere).

Back to cosy little Australia – this facial recognition software captures every pimple and pore on the faces of music-lovers who come to the event.

This, Rod Laver Arena claim in their privacy policy is used and then disgarded if someone is not on their banned list. However, there is no auditing or ability to tell whether or not this is actually the case.

There is a clause in the Privacy Policy about ‘obtaining sensitive information’: you know like someone’s racial or ethnic identity, political leanings, sexual preference, and whatever else they fucken feel like.

If you’re not outraged about it, then you obviously don’t understand the gravity of that sort of omnipresent power yet. A true Orwellian nightmare I am sorry to say. However the fact still remains, what is to be done to stop it?

If people are surveilled to that degree by Palantir and other shadowy “security” organisations, then it effectively weakens and atomises resistance movements before they even begin.

Media concentration effectively negates and paints those who resist as being ‘trouble-makers’ or ‘anarchists’ – as though a just, private, dignified, healthy and environmentally abundant world is a crazy thing for human beings to need and want!

Anyway I’ve gone really deep on this one, but this is effectively a brain dump of my deepest concerns for the future we all face, masterfully captured into a two hour long sonic journey by Massive Attack.

Like the good little consumer I am, I bought two overpriced Massive Attack T-shirts. I had my face and body analysed for my ethnicity, age, class, gender, political views, union affiliations.

I submitted to the unknowable, all-knowing algorithms of the ether to be ranked as a ‘material risk to civilisation’ or as ‘placid, peaceable human livestock’. I’m still not sure where I fit on that spectrum.

Encircled by facial recognition surveillance, I thanked myself silently that I didn’t wear my Keffiyeh to the gig and I felt a little bit ashamed that I didn’t wear it proudly at the same time.