Well, been a long while since I posted in this thread. I just saw them in Anaheim at the House of Blues today. Man, oh man. This is a show of the year contender for me and I don't really see anything that I may anticipate for the rest of the year that can top this. First off, the first show I ever saw ever since I moved to the OC in 2017 was Halestorm with Starset opening at the Anaheim House of Blues in a spot near the soundboard at the back of the stage. They were ok as a main supporter, although I griped about certain sound issues from them, but people liked them and their space-themed aesthetics. So, this is a great feat for Starset that 7 years later, they are headlining this very same building, with no openers or co-headlining acts, and this place was packed. I had to wait through 3 or so hours in line. Had to wait through all of the VIP, those that bought fastlane passes, in order for me to be on the rail section behind the soundboard to get the most optimized view I can if I wasn't going to be close to the stage.
I was expecting some nice spacey visuals that goes with their electronic/pseudo djent/active rock radio friendly/cinematic rock sounds with some vocal growls thrown sparsely, but holy fudge, the visuals were way beyond what I expected. So, one of the things that they are doing on this particular tour was showing a custom movie in-between songs and playing the songs in their catalog that ties the movie together.
They played 18 songs and the experience lasted two hours. The band sounds great. You have two people on strings, a keyboardist, a guitarist, drums, and bass (all dressed in like body armor with space aesthetics) and you have Dustin Bates (the vocalist and composer behind the themes of the band). Sure, his vocals at times sounds electronic and had certain effects where his pitch of the voice will sound different, but for a band like this, this makes sense, but the stuff that he sang without those effects, he sounded fine, and he was personable and was very thrilled to sell out the House of Blues and loved the support the crowd in the LA/OC area brought and it was a good crowd. Helps that there were no openers or supporting acts that could overshadow them and people were engaged in the songs and the plot of the movie during the entire show.
One thing I did not expect to see at a concert was that in the front of the stage, they had these fans where if they were working, they were able to project some computerized text and visuals as shown below. Sad part was that about an hour into the show, one of the fans in the top right corner of the area stopped working and everyone in the soundboard area was trying to get in touch to see what the update was to get that fan fixed and couldn't get it done. It didn't really detract from the show at all and everyone had to roll with it although it cut off some visuals or words, but nothing too drastic. After 13 songs in, and 90 minutes of the show and movie being done, there was a 6 minute intermission and their stage crew removed those fans and the band came up in more casual black uniforms if it makes sense and finished the show with some of their big hitters and send the crowd singing happy by playing Take Me Home, Country Roads on tape to end the show.
Again, for me, this is my favorite show of the year and I don't even think concerts that I can excited about this year, like Creed and Iron Maiden, is going to top this one.
