Massive Attack at Brighton Dome

The last couple of times we saw Massive Attack were slightly disappointing. Although they deserve huge arenas being the legends they are, their recent past output had Robert '3D' del Naja fully at the controls using his almost whispery voice getting lost within a huge moody soundtrack. I hadn't heard any of their new album, Heligoland as it has only just been released plus after 100th Window not really repeating the winning formula of Mezzanine I hadn't made an effort to preview it. Unfortunately Kerry couldn't join me for the gig so Kev stood in.

The band set up consisted of two drum kits, the guitar player who looked like Derek Acorah who's been around since Mezzanine, a keyboardist looking like Heston Blumenthol, a bassist and the vocalists of 3D, Daddy G (can you believe he's 50 years old!), Horace Andy and a couple of ladies, one to do the Shara Nelson songs and the other, recent addtion, Martina Topley-Bird who was the previous support act. No Cocteau lady this time. Behind the band was a slighly familiar sight of their digital light and text display show for the band's political messages, facts and quotes.

The performance overall was excellent with the band playing all the songs you really wanted to hear and about 4 or 5 new album tracks interspersed throughout the set. I'd say about 2 or 3 tracks from those played that I hadn't heard before were worthy but never capturing the classic hooks of the first 3 albums. The only real low point of the whole performance was a new track straight after their encore which didn't really go anywhere and left the crowd to talk amongst themselves.

Safe From Harm was undoubtedly the best using the guitar based Mezzanine sound to really blow the roof off and Horace Andy's Angel really captured the crowd's attention. Teardrop was also good though I've heard better live versions with different singers. Obviously, Unfinished Sympathy was played with not to much different from the original, though for me its always a slight surprise as whether the band could possibly tire from playing it everytime.

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