(((O))) Review: Porcupine Tree – Closure / Continuation. Live. Amsterdam 07/11/22

For 37 years, Porcupine Tree broke the boundaries by pushing the limits between alternative rock, hard rock, experimental textures, progressive rock, and post-rock into the outer limits. Whenever you listen to one of their albums such as; Fear of a Blank Planet, The Sky Moves Sideways, Deadwing, Stupid Dream, In Absentia, or their new album Closure / Continuation, it’s always a breath of fresh air to hear their music as an imaginative movie inside your head.

Two years ago, when they announced their return as a trio with the release of their eleventh studio album, 13 years after their tenth studio album of The Incident, it was a welcoming return for Steven Wilson, Richard Barbieri, and Gavin Harrison. Closure had proven to themselves that they still have the magic inside their hearts. Now with a live performance they did at a sold-out show at the Ziggo Dome in the Netherlands on November 7th, 2022, it’s a concert performance for the visual mind.

Not only it features Wilson, Barbieri, and Harrison, but fellow comrades of guitarist Randy McStine (Lo-Fi Resistance, In Continuum) who also did a tour as an opening act with The Pineapple Thief that featured Porcupine collaborator Harrison five years ago and Berklee College of Music alumni Nate Navarro on bass. Watching the show on my XBOX Series S, it brought back so many memories of concerts that I went to see.

From Roger Waters, Metallica, David Bowie, Zappa Plays Zappa, The Mars Volta, to Steven Wilson when he came to Houston at the House of Blues promoting his fifth studio album To The Bone in time for Christmas of 2018, the Ziggo performance puts you right in the middle, to watch the band giving them all they got. Wilson himself is like a conductor, giving each of his band mates, full support to signal them where he wants to come in, and when he wants them to come out.

Whether it’s the brutal awakening of ‘Sleep Together’ with its hypnotic electric keyboard loop in the midsection of the piece, the loneliness of healing and the struggles to survive as Wilson and Barbieri take audiences into the void with ‘Collapse the Light into Earth’, or the intensive bass beat Navarro does on the intro to ‘Harridan’, you are visioning a show for the ages.

Once they open up the show with the alarming turned melodic Jekyll & Hyde approach on ‘Blackest Eyes’ they are welcomed with open arms in Amsterdam. The harmonies, audiences singing along, they know each word to their songs in a heartbeat. Harrison’s drum patterns are in full control. After each lyric, he makes his snare-like patterns turn into machine gun fire before the rhythm section goes into a brutal-like sound of Tool’s Lateralus-era as Barbieri sets up the sounds of the serial killer’s plan to kill next.

“Now it’s very nice to see that in the 12-year absence, the audience has expanded somewhat”. Wilson has described to the sold-out arena. He has sense that the fans haven’t given up on the band’s career. Knowing how much they mean to them.

McStine and Wilson share harmony vocals together when they sing ‘Of The New Day’ detailing the resurgence and starting a new life while heading back into the darkness with its return to Arkham Asylum once more for the ‘Rat Race’ to begin. The militant beats Harrison does and Barbieri’s spooky arrangements makes it more uncomfortable and unsettling to see what inmates will cook up next before Wilson’s chord textures pays tribute to the Kind of Blue-era of Miles Davis, singing in the style of ‘Freddie Freeloader’.

The lightning and visuals during the performance, are out of this world. They just hit you into other areas. One of which is the song ‘Dignity’. It shows a black-and-white footage of a young boy, sitting next to a tree, who was bullied at school, neglected by his parents, and just had enough to run away and be free from all of the chaos that he’s endured.

Once ‘Fear of a Blank Planet’ begins, the audience cheers and claps along to the rapid guitar intro Wilson and McStine play. Surprisingly, the song was featured in the end credits for the 2019 video game CONTROL, written by Sam Lake, developed by Remedy Entertainment and starring Courtney Hope (The Bold and the Beautiful, The Young and the Restless) as the Federal Bureau of Control Agent, Jesse Faden.

It showed Sam has a strong taste of music. And to be allowed to use the song in the game, shows that there’s hope for either Wilson and Porcupine’s music to be featured in the next sequel, hopefully. For McStine to sing along with Wilson, it shows that he’s come a long way. His voice hits you when he takes centre stage in the next chorus of the song, singing, “bipolar disorder / can’t deal with the boredom”.

Wilson goes over to him, knowing that he’s got it, singing the lyric, three times I believe. Steven plays some incredible wah-wah solo as the lightening turns bright, dark yellow to go in a light-speeding texture. Barbieri puts his keyboards into the atmospheric universe and tackling into the Berlin school of music on ‘Buying New Soul’ as the rhythm section goes into their acoustic form, detailing the consequences by making a deal with the devil.

Closing up the show is a fan favourite. Yes, they didn’t perform the hit songs in which they were known for, which is probably a good thing. Because you don’t want to hear the same hits again and again, however, you want to delve into deeper cuts audiences aren’t familiar with. Which is what they did at Ziggo Dome. They can play whatever the hell they want.

They close out with ‘Trains’ from their 2002 album In Absentia. And what a way to close out the show with that song. Porcupine Tree have proven themselves that they are more than just a prog-rock band, they’ve come a long way since. And when you watch the performance, you get a sense on why they are still standing, and why they keep their music vibrating in true form.