The Chemical Brothers – 5th November 2019 @ Melbourne Arena, Melbourne VIC

The Chemical Brothers
Melbourne Arena, Melbourne VIC
November 5th 2019

There are gigs you watch, and there are gigs that completely take you apart. The Chemical Brothers don’t ease you in; they grab hold of your senses and bend them into new shapes. Melbourne Arena was already vibrating before they even appeared, a restless hum of light, heat and human anticipation.

The Avalanches opened with a set that felt like a fever dream. Disco loops, ghostly samples and fractured melodies drifted through the haze — warm, nostalgic, almost romantic in the way it teased at memory. It was the calm before the chaos, the deep breath before everything blew apart.

When the lights dropped, Melbourne stopped moving. For a heartbeat, there was nothing. Then the bass hit, and the world erupted. A low-frequency rumble rolled through the floor as strobes carved through the smoke. Two silhouettes stood behind a glowing wall of machines, commanding an arena that had already surrendered.

Go detonated first, shaking every surface in the building. Lasers tore through the dark, pink dancers twisted across giant screens, and the crowd surged forward like a wave. Every beat hit like a heartbeat. Free Yourself followed, and the message landed. Arms up. Eyes closed. Thousands of bodies moving as one.

From that moment, it stopped feeling like a concert and became something else entirely. The visuals were enormous and surreal — robotic heads lowering from the ceiling, faces flickering in loops, religious symbols and kaleidoscopic bursts of light. MAH was a sprint through fire. Eve of Destruction was pure adrenaline, a blur of sound and image that teetered between chaos and clarity.

The new No Geography tracks felt right at home among the anthems. Got to Keep On turned the arena into a single, sweating organism. Saturate bathed everyone in molten orange and red, pulsing in time with the bass. The sound wasn’t just heard, it was felt, pressing against skin, chest, bone.

And then, calm. Star Guitar drifted in like sunrise after a storm. The melody shimmered, fragile and bright, laced with a ghost of New Order’s Temptation. The lights cooled to blue. The crowd swayed softly, as if gravity had loosened its grip. For a few minutes, the room floated.

The peace didn’t last long however. Hey Boy Hey Girl cracked open the night again, pulling everyone back to life. Galvanize hit like an earthquake, rhythm clashing with light until the floorboards shook. Chemical Beats was a wall of percussion and static energy, raw and primal. And when Block Rockin’ Beats finally dropped, it was mayhem. Every person shouting, jumping, grinning, losing themselves completely. It wasn’t nostalgia, it was ignition.

The closing track, The Private Psychedelic Reel, was something else entirely. A swirling sitar loop rose through a storm of sound, the visuals folding into galaxies, stars, smoke. For a few minutes, time fell away. No past, no future, just pure, endless motion.

Then, silence.

People stood frozen, faces glowing in the afterlight. No words, just the sound of breath and disbelief. Outside, the air was warm and still buzzing. The city felt smaller, slower, like it hadn’t quite caught up with what had just happened.

The Chemical Brothers didn’t just play music. They built a world and tore it apart from the inside. Two hours of beauty, chaos, and surrender, proof that sound, when pushed far enough, can feel like light.

It was art and electricity, communion and collapse. The kind of show that rewires you a little, so even silence feels different after.