NGHTMRE @ 1st Bank Center: Review & Gallery Plus Big Gigantic's New Album Preceding Gigantic NGHTMRE @ Red Rocks Next Fall

NGHTMRE along with SVDDEN DEATH came roaring through the first bank center and left Denverites with the neck-aches they likely went into the show anticipating for the next morning. The heavy-hitting, in-your-face dubstep, and quasi-shy in person producer better known as Tyler Marenyi did not disappoint with an almost 2-hour set jam-packed with all the fan favorites and plenty we’d never heard before.

Preceding Marenyi was California based (and bred) producer, SVVDEN Death. Best known for his collaboration with Marshmello, “Sell Out”, Danny Howland stood up to the Bass Capital’s test, the Mile High City was mentally 2-thumbs up as he primed the crowd with his distinguishable style and sound.

On a midway stop in what’s roughly a 50-date tour, The Portal Tour, we felt the energy boom in the suburban arena. The brand new light and production design perfectly matched the energy of the set, showcasing a unique circular truss for the majority of the lights. To each side of, “The Portal” light design, 3 fire cannons liberally toasted the front... 25% of the audience. Dominic Lalli of Big Gigantic even stopped by, not to play but to join NGHTMRE on stage for a song or two, mainly hyping the crowd while the most recent Gigantic NGHTMRE hit, “Like That” was being unleashed on the almost 5,000 ecstatic fans.

If you’ve seen Big Gigantic play, even once, you know Lalli has a knack for pulling energy out of a crowd. The two forces have combined before, much to fans liking, and will combine again. Big G’s now 9th annual, 2-day extravaganza, “Rowdytown” is already announced for September 2020. If you’ve been following along, it’s been a wild ride and almost decade these pioneers have given us at arguably the world’s best venue, each year seeming to up the ante from the year before. Whether it’s featuring fellow trailblazers, Griz and/or Gramatik, projecting eye-popping visuals on the sister rock formations, or their most recent implementation of 3D visuals on the stage itself, Lalli and partner Jeremy Sulkan are always pushing the envelope.

This year, Big G’s twist is to feature the bass-forward, nghtmre, as a dual-headliner on the first night, Sept. 25th. Marenyi is set to play not in addition to Big G but to WITH the funky duo, going b2b for seemingly the entire set. This will be the 4th time “Gigantic NGHTMRE” has taken the stage together, appearing before at noteworthy fests like ULTRA and Denver’s, Decadance. Details and tickets are available here. In addition to Big G giving us a 9th Rowdytown this year, we also get their 7th full-length feature album. And we don’t have to wait until Fall to get it.

Free Your Mind hit last week and is available pretty much everywhere you can stream or download music. Check here to find it on your favorite music platform. The new 13-track release features some familiar names like The Funk Hunters and the noteworthy voice of Jennifer Hartwick in the title track, “ Free Your Mind”. Hartswick also provided the undeniable hook for Big G’s monster-hit, “Got The Love”. There’s even a collab with Louis Futton, who performed recently at Denver’s, Cervantes Other Side (SV coverage for that show here). It makes sense now why Lalli popped up for that show too. According to Big Gigantic, Free Your Mind “is about exploring all of the different things that make us human—the things that connect us to ourselves and to each other—so that we can get to know our true selves and live our greatest lives without anything holding us back.”

We plan on bringing you the best coverage from the Gigantic Nghtmre and more on the new album from Big G themselves. Stay tuned and drop a comment below to let us know what you think of Free Your Mind.