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Rating: It is not yet dark and the arena audience still needs to fill up when the concert begins and Robert "3D" Del Naja steps onto the stage amidst the initial bleeps of Future Proof. The first reaction isn't the best, the sound still needs to be calibrated, and above all, his voice isn't sufficiently highlighted, which in the transition from the hip-hop style of previous works to an almost whispered singing represents the only element of real novelty in the recent album 100th window.
What immediately captures attention instead is the gigantic screen at the back of the stage where numbers in perfect Matrix style alternate at an impressive speed, like on a gigantic computer terminal, which together with the imposing lighting system reveals the importance of the visual component of the show. There will follow the most disparate world statistics - in Italian - accompanied by real-time counters, the HTML of the website www.massiveattack.com, a list of computer viruses, an animation of the globe with the entire tour path up to the current stop, with information about the city of Verona, including weather forecasts for the coming days... a bombardment of information also connectable to the "internet" suggestions of the album.
The group remains in the shadows in this first phase of the concert, and after a necessary adjustment of the acoustics, it's possible to perceive how the structure of the songs live is profoundly modified compared to the studio recordings. The melody is set by the bass line, the guitar plays in a manner akin to samples and sometimes - as in Everywhen - replaces the role of keyboards, which unlike on the record seem to be in the background. The rhythms are syncopated but slowed down as if it were a form of jungle missing the faster track, the result is a dilation of the songs that makes the atmosphere very relaxed and extremely distant from the dark style of Mezzanine, also thanks to the longer duration of the songs on 100th Window.
An essential element is the electric violin, particularly prominent in Antistar and Butterfly Caught. The situation changes with the performance of Risingson, the screen is off and the group is now illuminated. Daddy G is also on stage, although he didn’t contribute to the creation of the latest album; from the audience's reception, it is evident how essential his presence is for the performance of the track, as well as later for Karmacoma, followed by a real ovation. The great past successes follow, interpreted by official singers like Horace Andy - incredible in Angel - or female vocalists recruited for the occasion to alternately replace the impressive sequence of vocalists on record.
According to foreign internet publications, the two female singers on tour are Dot Allison, who didn’t make Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins be missed in Teardrop, perhaps the most difficult imitation to sustain, and the lesser-known Debbie Miller who nonetheless delivered a spine-chilling interpretation of Unfinished Sympathy sparing no vocalizations worthy of the original. There is also the opportunity for 3D to emphasize his political commitment against the war in Iraq and the choices of the USA and England; the means of communication is always the screen, projecting images of planes and bombs, statistics on military spending by various countries, and a series of questions about what has been resolved by the recently concluded war. Meanwhile, Hymn Of The Big Wheel and Safe From Harm are being performed, whose lyrics are particularly suitable for the topic. The concert ends with Group Four, which even live presents itself as a long suite with extensive use of guitar and accelerating rhythm, a perfect way to mark the epilogue of a hugely successful evening.
The full group (10 people!) says goodbye and thanks, later they will appear up high in the area behind the stage, standing and admiring the arena which slowly starts to empty. Some fans approach as close as possible, but it is 3D and the others who go to meet them, a difficult scene to imagine for a group seemingly detached from its audience and which could rightly show the presumption of those who have indelibly marked the musical production of the '90s. In summary, an engaging concert, but in a way difficult to describe, there remains a sense of lightness that I did not expect, 3D's Massive Attack have more homogeneity and cohesion and the dark side seems to have faded into something less explicit but more expressive. I was finally repaid from the disappointment caused by the concert I saw in 1998 at Palalido in Milan, where terrible acoustics ruined all my expectations and left me with some doubts about Massive Attack's actual ability to live up to the complexity of their studio recordings live.
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