Massive Attack to tour Australia for first time in 16 years | Massive Attack
Massive Attack will tour Australia for the first time in 16 years.
The influential British trip-hop group, consisting of Robert “3D” Del Naja and Grant “Daddy G” Marshall, will perform in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney in August. The upcoming tour will be the band’s fourth concert in Australia and their first since 2010.
Massive Attack recently released their first new music in six years; A collaboration with Tom Waits called Boots on the Ground. Guardian music critic Alexis Petridis awarded the track four stars, describing it as “dark, disturbing, ominous, with a distinct WTF? line running through it… music perfectly attuned to the times.”
Formed in Bristol in 1988, Massive Attack are pioneers of the trip-hop genre, a dark sound consisting of hip-hop beats, soul samples, dub bass and atmospheric electronics. Their 1991 debut album, Blue Lines, was a benchmark among the most influential albums of its era. Their biggest hits include Unfinished Sympathy and Teardrop.
They have sold more than 13 million copies of their five albums: Blue Lines, Protection (1994), Mezzanine (1998), 100th Window (2003) and Heligoland (2010).
The group was briefly prevented from entering Australia in 2003 when their visas were canceled following Del Naja’s arrest as part of a UK police crackdown on child sexual abuse images. He was never charged and the investigation was dropped due to lack of evidence, but Del Naja claimed that a British tabloid called the Australian embassy and told them of the allegations, which led to the band having to postpone their Australian tour.
Although their visas were eventually reinstated, Del Naja later told the Guardian that the Australian tour “was the hardest time I’ve ever had in my life. I had to go on tour with these allegations in the air, which was terrible.”
Some internet sleuths claimed that Del Naja was secretly the Bristol street artist Banksy; This theory stems from Massive Attack’s tour dates clashing with the worldwide appearance of Banksy’s murals, including some in Melbourne in 2003.
In recent years, Massive Attack have made headlines for their political activism rather than their new music. In April, Robert Del Naja was among 500 people arrested in London on suspicion of supporting a banned organization after taking part in a mass protest against the Palestine Action ban.
In September, Massive Attack became the first major label to pull its catalog from Spotify in protest at founder Daniel Ek’s €600m (A$975m, £520m) investment in military AI company Helsing. The band, which has boycotted performing in Israel since 1999, has also signed up to an initiative called No Music for Genocide, in which more than 400 artists and labels have blocked their music from streaming services in Israel.
And in 2024, the group staged a one-day festival in Bristol titled Act 1.5, powered by 100% renewable energy; This was a reference to the 2015 UN climate agreement, which asks countries to keep global warming below the 1.5°C threshold.
Pre-sale for Australian shows will begin on June 4, with tickets going on general sale on June 5.
