Review by Jeremy Elwood • Photos by Michele A’Court
There’s a documentary on Prime Video called No Dress Rehearsal, about the Canadian band The Tragically Hip. If you don’t know their story, I won’t spoil it, but in 2016 they played an emotional final tour, culminating in a hometown arena gig which has become almost mythical.
Shihad are finishing up their final tour under very different circumstances, but for the sold-out crowd at Spark Arena last night the memories will undoubtably be equally indelible.
With apologies to support acts Mim Jensen and Dick Move, I only made it in time for the D4, one of New Zealand’s finest live rock and roll outfits in their own right. Their half hour set, kicking off with Sake Bomb and thrashing through album highlights from both 6Twenty and Out of My Head left their audience (and several microphone stands) reeling, but as singer Jimmy Christmas himself acknowledged “We all know why we’re here.”
Shihad have been doing this for 37 years, and have always been phenomenal live. “Legendary” is both an overused and slightly backhanded description, but for those who were at their free Aotea Square gig in 2005, any one of their sunset Big Day Out spots, or for myself first seeing them at Otago University Union Hall in 1994, if the shoe fits…
For two hours we witnessed a true career retrospective – at least two songs from each studio album, starting with 2021’s Old Gods and stretching all the way back to their aptly titled 1993 debut Churn – cranked out with an intensity and passion equal to any rock band on Earth.
I’m pretty certain the band meeting to decide the setlist went something like this: “Which two tracks from that album rock the hardest? Sweet as, we’re done here.” This was wall-to-wall hard rock. The closest thing to a ballad, the grinding Pacifier, was given the full arena rock treatment, illuminated only by phones held aloft by the 6000-plus crowd, and the one moment when we thought they might be about to dial things back a bit was nothing but a prelude to the frenetic My Mind’s Sedate.
It’s a testament to the quality and depth of Shihad’s output that everyone in attendance likely had a favourite song that didn’t make the cut, yet couldn’t even pretend to be disappointed. Anthems and hits shared space with tracks picked specifically for their live impact, and by the time the clock wound back to the 90s with Killjoy’s You Again and “Factory” from Churn (two tracks you have to wonder if four young guys playing hardcore gigs in Wellington ever imagined would be crashing over a crowd this size – part of me thinks they did) any fan, from any era, knew they had witnessed something special.
Somehow, this was a rock spectacle totally devoid of ego. There were pyrotechnics and poses, a full lightshow and crowd wrangling, but it was all performed with a real sense of “can you believe we get to do this?” At one point, I turned around in my seat to find bassist Karl Kippenberger had left the stage and was playing on the steps behind me, and it wasn’t really all that surprising, more like a mate in a pub band showing off his new wireless toys. Jon Toogood is a whirling dervish when he plays – give me a frontman showdown between Dave Grohl, Eddie Vedder and Jon Toogood and I’ll take the kid from Wellington at even money – but is so relaxed onstage between songs that he could be at an open mic, rather than in front of the largest single show audience for a New Zealand hard rock band, ever. When he introduces Tom Larkin as “the best rock drummer on Earth”, it’s with a cheeky grin, although given that Larkin has been the backbone of this band from the beginning it’s a hard point to argue with. Phil Knight’s guitar and synthesiser contributions are such a huge part of the band’s live sound, yet somehow they’re just “there”, almost unheralded. But when Shihad are in full flow, I challenge anyone to name a tighter, louder unit that these shores, or many others, have ever produced.
If that was the end, it was remarkably unsentimental. Early in the show, Toogood calmed the developing moshpit by saying “we don’t want anyone to get hurt, tonight is all about joy”, and that’s precisely how it felt. It was a band going out on top, on their own terms, and at their own volume – loud forever, indeed. On behalf of everyone who was lucky enough to witness it, thank you Shihad, for every power chord and chorus you’ve left ringing in our ears.