When a gig utilises a venue with as much grandeur as the Forecourt of the Sydney Opera House, it’s already off to a great start in providing a memorable experience – but with an extra-special act onboard providing the soundtrack, it’s not that difficult to push it over the line into something that’ll never be forgotten.

Bjork performed the duties a few years ago with a show that delivered exhilaration by the truckload, but last week it was none other than Massive Attack taking to the stage. If there was anyone who could match Bjork’s breathtaking charisma, it was them.

It’s been forever since we last saw them in Australia – they’re such an influential and enduring act, so how could they possibly not deliver? Nonetheless; they’ve been an act that has often tread the fine line between the dark mystery of when they’re at their best, and otherwise meandering downtemp that fails to really engage (arguably, that’s exactly what we’ve heard on their new album Heligoland ). Would their live show disappoint for that same reason?

These questions were answered fairly quickly when they hit the stage last week, and from the moment 3D and Daddy G, along with the rest of the band, fired up to the driving, sinister rhythms of United Snakes, it was clear their sound had made a healthy transition to the live stage – it had as much power as anything they’ve put to record over the past 20 years. The music was ably assisted by the glimpses of flashing light on the LCD screens flanking the band, but it wasn’t until that song’s synthy bass stabs rang out across the crowd that we got our first breahtaking moment – the chords were greeted in unison by stunning blue lights breaking through the smoke and piercing across the crowd. And that was only the beginning, as the show delivered one of the best audio/visual fusions we’ve seen yet, with each enhancing the other perfectly.

The screens behind the performers were far from the sort of blinding overkill we’ve seen from the acts like Nine Inch Nails in recent years – but a little can go a long way. The LCDs were deployed in thin vertical strips behind the band, with a gap of about half a metre between them allowing smoky light to shine through, only adding further to the atmosphere. A few songs in, and we got to see it in full effect. In a visual display that highlighted the disparity between what a Third World aid worker is paid, against what a UK politician spends on something as banal as toilet paper – the estimated values were counted up digit by digit in front of us. Kicking off with figures as little as $10, they soared as high as $10,000,000 over the course of the song. Fused with Massive Attack’s performance, the impact was mesmerising.

Thematically, if you’re looking for a comparison of what they were trying to do with the visuals, then the best act to look towards is U2, of all bands. They hit the road in the early 90s with the Zoo TV tour, a technology-heavy stadium spectacular that was dripping with postmodern irony. One of the opening songs The Fly featured an endless succession of words and phrases flashed up upon the screens – the intent was to reflect on the endless barrage of images we’re bombarded with everyday in contemporary culture, which have the effect of imbuing the meaningless with meaning, and correspondingly, stripping the profound of any meaning at all.

This same sort of sly political commentary was in force right throughout Massive Attack’s show – for the first few songs, these same seemingly random, but oddly familiar, words and phrases began flashing upon the screens, but as the show progressed the the subtlety was gradually ditched. During Inertia Creeps, bright neon letters and numbers began flashing at high speed through thick smoke in a single long line on the screen, eventually forming into some of the more absurd and banal headlines to spew out of our celebrity-obsessed culture recently. “Nicole Kidman gets saucy for Vogue… Madonna and Lourdes to outfit teens… Gerard on Jennifer: ‘I trimmed her bush’”.

Later during Atlas Air, the screens came to simulate a departure lounge display in an airport, shifting into a wireframe of the world showing airline routes crisscrossing across continents, with each successive country’s flag broadcast up on the screen; before eventually morphing into the corporate logos of multi-nationals like Nestle, Apple, Nokia, who’ve managed to breach every corner of the planet. The effect of all this spectacle was to leave a feeling of unease, even if you often didn’t immediately pick up on what was being conveyed.

But while the visuals were a major part of their show, at all times it was enhancing the dark beauty of the music itself, with every slow build and brooding moment recreated perfectly by the band. Many of the concert’s best musical moments came from their late 90s masterpiece Mezzanine; the slow, brooding build of Angel, which finally crescendoed in crashing guitars; the lumbering rhythms of of Risingson, with the spectacle switched off for a moment until 3D’s haunting aside kicks in – “Dream on…”. Bright lights all of a sudden cut into the open air above the harbour, before dropping down to hit the crowd. It was just as haunting and eerie as the very first time you heard that song. And they had their most intimate, low-key moment when Martina Topley-Bird fronted up to perform the eternal Teardrop.

There were a few moments of euphoria, in the form of Massive Attack’s ‘anthems’ like Unfinished Sympathy and Safe From Harm. However, the ‘slow build’ was in effect for the majority of the two-hour show, and what’s amazing is how willing the crowd were to go along with the journey. It was certainly a sophisticated bunch of music fans who’d fronted up for the occasion (you’d have to be a die-hard to fork out $120 for a tickets, after all), and it’s hard to imagine it working so well if they’d been booked for a festival.

Simillarly, it’s difficult to imagine how the experience would have come together so perfectly without such a stunning and thoughtful visual show to back it up; the crowd’s attention could have easily been lost in the slow builds. Still, their efforts account for far more that just tacking on a bunch of sparkly stuff for the sake of it; it’s one of the most integrated audio/visual experiences we’ve seen yet. The bar has been raised.

CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS FROM THE SHOW