It seemed like every New Zealander and his (or her) dog packed into the Metro on Saturday night for the last instalment of the Shapeshifter 2011 album tour. That’s fair enough considering that as New Zealander’s themselves, Shapeshifter hold a certain appeal to their countrymen.

But regardless of nationality, you don’t have to look far nowadays to hear or read stories about another classic Shapeshifter performance happening somewhere around the world. Their festival shows have become the stuff of legend and phrases like ‘Shapeshifter club show’ are most often accompanied by ‘sold out’.

It’s a fair assessment, then, that people’s expectations were pretty high – and, I’m happy to report, the show lived up to the hype.

Unfortunately, many people failed to turn up for DJ JPS who had the warm up duties. Decked out in his Sunday best shirt and tie, he skirted around a variety of styles, resting somewhere in the territory of 2-step – tracks like Dolami by Sebastien were paired with grimy dub sounds of the English musician, Joker.

In the ten minutes that passed, the transition between acts was complete: the lights were dimmed, hundreds of people materialised from outside and there was a last ditch effort for drinks before the scramble to get into pole position. Just like that, it was on.

It was so dark inside that there was no real way to check the full scope of what was happening – all you could see was the brilliant, intermittent flashes of the strobe as it spat light across a sea of people collectively losing it. The Metro’s amphitheatre set-up worked wonders for the acoustics – the dingy, unpretentious set-up goes hand in hand with the Shapeshifter sound: a magical pairing of sound and venue.

Shapeshifter went with Dutchies as their opener. The track has a sense of a grand opening and they were able to translate the scale of the track to the venue well, a skill has that no doubt been honed through the years of experience under their belt. Vocalist P Digsss invited the crowd to come one, come all and join the party – and come they did.

It was only a matter of minutes before the mosh-pit gained momentum up front – but it would be some time before the sweaty and exhausted crowd made their way home, jaws satisfyingly dragging along the ground behind them.