Even with their newly revisioned bridge, the queue in front of the Melkweg goes all the way around the building, which is a clear sign Friday night’s show is completely sold out. This night is part of what STARSET, tonight’s headliner, calls ‘the final chapter’. The band, led by lead singer Dustin Bates, has been touring on a storyline springing from Bates’ mind for a couple of years. Tonight’s show called ‘Immersion’ concludes the Starset Society story they’ve been telling over these years.
There’s no support act for tonight, as they need all the time to properly tell their story from start to finish. All in all, the show takes around 2 hours. The stage has been blocked from view before the show starts, keeping suspense as high as possible before unveiling it all. Once the banner drops, the seven band members on stage appear standing perfectly still, all wearing helmets to push the attention to the screen behind them.
The outfits of the band members all have a very cinematic dystopian feeling to them. Movies like Dune and Blade Runner or games like Halo and Cyberpunk come to mind when watching it all unfold in front of us. The science fiction movie features a post-apocalyptic world, where a working man needs to pay for medicine, which he doesn’t seem to earn enough for in ‘the New East’. In order to get what he needs, he needs to work with the rebels.
This storyline is enhanced by the music STARSET plays, with the movie and the music connected. The story behind it and the music are perfectly mixed together, giving both the story and the people on stage some time to breathe. It’s all a touch overwhelming, with the stage also featuring a see-through screen in front of the band, as part of the storyline. But this also makes it all the more immersive, which is shown by how heavily invested the crowd is. During the movie portions, multiple chants of ‘Fuck the New East’ can be heard from the floor.
All the music STARSET has made until this point has been in support of the story Bates tells in his cinematic universe. It’s more than just a soundtrack to the story, the music brings the story to life beyond what we see. It feels at first as if you’re watching a sequel to a movie you haven’t seen yet, but the music fills in the parts of the plot you’ve missed, the parts the screen doesn’t show, so you know exactly what to feel by the end.
If you want to find out how the story ends, you can still experience it for another week in Europe, until they conclude their tour in Zurich on November 6th.
