Missing at recordBar, Kansas City MO (2024-06-13)

MISSING SETLIST Victorian Funeral Cult of Bleeding Hearts Diasasteress Ruined Gold Shades of Winter Lone Souls The Rose Room MISSING James White - Vocals Jon Darsey - Bass Trevor Pink - Guitar Brenner Moate - Guitar Blake Robicheaux - Drums READ MORE The Chameleons Some of the old, some of the new-- the iconic post-punk band The Chameleons have returned with a brand-new three-song EP, “Where Are You?”, just out now via Metropolis Records and represents their first new studio recordings in over two decades.

It may be this band’s name, but it’s the headliners that were really “Missing”--

1908’s cult post-punk Manchester UK band The Chameleons were a few dates in to their current US club tour, playing their album “Strange Times” in its entirety, making the way east from Colorado, when their Sprinter van broke down in Western Kansas, without any hope of making that night’s gig at the recordBar in downtown Kansas City (Gratefully, the show has already been re-scheduled for November 4, with previous tickets being honored).

New Orleans Gothic rock support band Missing had traveled separately and were in town and set up, so took the stage to perform their thirty-five-minute set, as they normally would have. To the crowd that remained despite the bad news of the headliner, it was a positive experience to see the band play live, for their first time in Kansas City.

Missing (maybe not the most internet search-friendly name) formed in the Crescent City in 2016, and has a brand-new sophomore album out, “Nocturnalia”, written over the last four years by the band (incl. throughout the pandemic/lockdown period), and is self-described as their darkest collection of songs to date.

“This album is a deep, cavernous dive through trauma, hopelessness, fear and struggle, written in dark times, reflecting on times darker still. As much as the record is an open wound, each song is also a wound in healing, a fence in mending, a bridge being rebuilt, a life being put back together, slowly but surely.”, they write and in true DIY fashion, offered handmade art and vinyl of the new record which they helped press themselves, for sale at merch booth.

Their sound of the quintet is in the classic Goth sound, and while they visually look like five very different people; together, they make a dark and foreboding sound, that is also very palatable and mesmerizing. Singer White stretched forward from the stage to engage with the audience, and we think they made many new fans, both for the kind act of playing the show anyway, and for their dark but inviting sound.

For the moment, Missing is shown as the support act for The Chameleons when they return to the US in Oct/Nov (including that November 4^th re-scheduled date in KC), so fingers crossed, there’s likely another chance to see Missing live this Fall.

(Click on any image to enlarge and see in full)

MISSING at recordBar, Kansas City MO (2024-06-13)

MISSING at recordBar, Kansas City MO (2024-06-13)

JohnC ♥ johnc@weheartmusic.com ♥ X / twitter.com