Anika Nilles & Nevell - Gig Review 30th November @ Max Watts, Melbourne VIC

Anika Nilles & Nevell
Max Watts, Melbourne/Naarm, Vic
November 30^th, 2025
‍Supports: Brekky Boy and Mad Vantage

Tonight we joyously journey well off the beaten musical path, into the heady and esoteric world of instrumental jazz/rock fusion. To the untrained ear of the everyday Joe or Joanne music fan, this world must be really quite bewildering and inaccessible: there’s no signing whatsoever, let alone verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-finish song structures; much of it is in odd and compound meters, so you can’t dance or even comfortably bob your head to it; the compositions often wind out to the six, seven, eight minute mark and well beyond; and, well, I could go on. But, when you acquire a taste for this type of musical expression, you soon come to realise that some of the very best musicians on the planet reside within this realm, musicians with stratospheric levels of technical skill, extraordinary imaginations and an uncanny knack for weird, wild and wacky compositions that take the listener in a myriad of musical directions. 

Even in our little (population-wise) nation at the arse-end of the world. Tonight’s festivities feature two local fusion acts, both with astonishingly different approaches to their craft. Openers Mad Vantage hearken back, to some extent, to the old-school days of the late sixties and into the seventies when progressive rock and jazz/rock fusion experienced their genesis. But they also give it a modern Aussie twist.

The crowd is sparse-ish as they take the stage, but builds steadily over the course of their thirty-minute set. And they take this brief but wonderful opportunity in both hands, impressing the audience with their musicianship and positive vibe. It’s kind of an odd setup: a side-on drummer faces an also side-on keyboardist at the very front of the stage, while two electric guitarists stand on a platform right up the very back. No bass, but between the keys and the twin guitars, there’s more than enough bottom-end.

Left-of-centre is the norm on bills like this. 

One of the first things that strikes me about Mad Vantage is that, while the odd time signatures fly around all over the place, their music still has a very strong pulse that you can latch onto. Their music creates some very nice vibes and atmospheres, but also goes hard and rocks TF out when it needs to. And, arguably most importantly, they appear to be having a ball delivering their unconventional sounds to the crowd. 

Their thirty minute set seems to fly by in the blink of an eye.

Brekky Boy are up next, and boy, what a contrast. They’re also an Aussie band playing fusion, but their sound and live presentation are so wildly different from the opener it makes your head spin. 

Their approach is comic as well as cosmic. 

They open with a ‘cover’ of the well-known call centre hold music you get when you ring Telstra or a power company or something like that. Initially I’m standing there thinking, ‘where TF have I heard this before?’, and then it hits: the canned voice comes over the PA, telling us our call is important to them and they will answer as soon as possible! It sets the tone, pardon the piss-poor pun. Their set includes introducing the band with silly celebrity names like The Rock and Taylor Swift, doing the ‘Whitney Houston challenge’ (which I’ve seen the members of Slipknot, and many others, attempt, with hilarious results – look it up, it’s very entertaining!) and draping t-shirts over each other’s faces so they have play blind. 

Their setup is also quite unique, and in direct contrast to the other two bands on the bill tonight: quite minimalist, with a side-on drummer, a side-on keyboardist, and a bassist between them, in a little open triangle at the front of the stage. That’s it, a stripped-back three-piece.

All that aside, these boys can really play (because of course they can), and their live set is very entertaining overall. They back up their silliness with skill. With this band, again in contrast to the other two bands on tonight, it’s less about the rhythmic complexity. They focus more about the nuanced arrangements and instrumentation. Whilst hamming it up.

Although it’s hard to tell sometimes, in the hands of highly skilled musicians, but something else that’s very impressive about this band’s set is that I suspect much of it is improvised. 

I’ve watched a fair amount of live fusion over the years, from Virgil Donati to Spyro Gyra to Yellowjackets to John Scofield, and several more, but this is probably the most fun and funniest live set of jazz fusion I’ve ever seen.

A few months ago, a German woman was named as the drummer to fill the monumental shoes of the late and great Neil Peart when Canada’s mighty Rush do their comeback tour in 2026. The overwhelming reaction was positive, but of course there was a small but very noisy (empty vessels, and all that) minority mindlessly howling ‘you can’t replace Neil!’ and labelling the decision ‘woke’ because the replacement happens to have a vagina rather than a penis. I can only hope some of these so-and-so’s catch Anika Nilles in a live setting, as she will utterly devastate any idea that she’s not up to the task. 

Hell, she’s already toured with Jeff Beck (to whom she dedicates a couple of her newer tracks tonight), and by all accounts absolutely nailed (Nilled?) it.

First up, she is a superb drummer, highly skilled, fluid and possessed of great feel and facility. She handles odd-time grooves on her ear (important in Rush’s music). She is a powerhouse, but also plays with great feel. She sits very comfortably in the top echelon of drummers on the planet today. 

Of course, a great drummer does not a great band maketh, and she has put a spectacular array of musicians around her in her band known as Nevell. They are a six-piece, and once again it’s an odd setup: she, once again, plays side-on on the right hand side of the stage (stage left, from the musician’s point of view, which is where she exits from – Rush fanatics will know what I’m talking about!). Directly opposite her, also playing side-on, is her fabulous percussionist (his slamming solo section is a true highlight). In between the two percussive powerhouses sit two keyboardists, while directly behind the keysmen, on that same platform stand the guitarist and bassist. 

It's kinda odd, but it works an absolute treat, and the six of them treat us to an epic set of mind-expanding jazzy/rocky/funky instrumental fusion that thrills the solid crowd no end. In fact they hold us completely spellbound for almost two hours, taking us on a journey of rich, powerful and nuanced sound, a musical smorgasbord that delights the senses and brightens your day. 

Anika herself sits there behind her beautiful-sounding kit, playing like a legend, smiling like she’s having an absolute ball, and charming everyone with her between-song words, even though English is not her first language. She is top shelf, and I cannot wait to see her laying down the grooves and thundering around the kit with Rush next year.

All in all, it is a stellar night of musical expression at Max Watts tonight, and everyone heads back out into a cold Melbourne night (even though it’s very nearly summer!) absolutely satisfied with what they witnessed.

Review By Rod Whitfield

Setlist

Glassy
Chary Life
Rocket
Mallay
Float
Eclipse
Fading Bloom
Morphosis
Fiji
Pikalar
Radiate

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