Porcupine Tree

Porcupine Tree is a band that makes you forget that there is a world outside the concert hall.

The reason? Well let me start off right away with the fact that Porcupine Tree is a phenomenal live act.  I, like many, am not well versed when it comes to their music, so I enlisted the help of my good friend, Colin MacFarlane, who has been a loyal follower of Porcupine Tree, to accompany me on this melodic adventure and they did not fail to enthrall me.

They always kick off their concerts, as Colin told me, by playing their most recent albums in their entirety.  In this case they played the newly released, The Incident, of which they played only one through fourteen, leaving out the last four songs on the album.  They do this as if you are listening to the album on your IPod.  They started with “Occam’s Razor” and ended with the fourteenth song, “I Drive the Hearse.”

During this musical journey we watched continual dark and disturbing videos of people in dire situations, and at other times, psychedelic images that rolled behind them. The videos that they chose to play behind them seemed to fall into beautiful harmony with their music, regardless of their dark nature. 

Something that really hit me while listening to this concert is how they mix and match different musical styles and somehow manage to blend it all together to create a complete masterpiece of music. To make this all clear for those who are not familiar with Porcupine Tree: they take haunting melodies, such as that from the song “Kneel and Disconnect,” that remind you of Pink Floyd, then go a little harder with progressive rock sounds, like on the song “Occam’s Razor,” that remind you of early Rush, and then they blast into hard guitar rifts that have an Industrial sound, like with the title track of their last album, “The Incident,” that make think you think of Nine Inch Nails.  I know that this sounds crazy, but it all works.

When looking around the Metropolis concert hall, it was easy to see that it works. It was so crammed that it was almost daunting.  It was literally packed to the rafters. There were people hanging in the stairways and they were completely transfixed by this UK band that has been around since 1987. This show was completely sold out and it was very easy at the onset to see why.  This band is not a band that makes you go wild, but mesmerises you and takes you to a different world.

It led me to beg the question “why haven’t we ever heard them on the radio?” Is it because there isn’t a market for them here? Obviously not, when you couldn’t even find a scalped ticket.  This band has a cult following, which excites me in that it is not always necessary to go commercial to be successful. They have stayed true to who they are and their craft.

They continued to hypnotize us with eight more songs, from different albums, such as “The Start of Something Beautiful” from the 2005 album Deadwing to “Anesthetize” from the 2007 album Fear of a Blank Planet.  They then ended our dream state with a two-song encore.  They played The “Sound of Muzak” and “Trains,” both from the In Absentia album. 

Porcupine Tree may not be a band for everyone, but they sure sucked me into their dream-like sequences.  I will be sure to never miss them in concert again. They’ve made me a believer.