Review: Tech N9ne ft. Joey Cool Australian Tour

Show: Tech N9ne ft. Joey Cool

Venue: Northcote Theatre

Date: Fridayday, March 28th, 2025

Review: Ned Tepper

Photos: Amin Azoor and Ned’s iPhone

If you haven’t caught Tech N9ne live at least once, you are truly missing out. Friday night in Melbourne must have been my 5^th or 6^th time at least seeing the world’s best rapper. Yeah, I may be a little biased, but Tech has been bashing out hit after hit for well over 20 years and has somehow managed to hang onto an underground following while capturing attention from the mainstream. It is truly remarkable, as is his live set. Guess what? He can rap just like he does on his albums both live and in person! We rolled into the Northcote Theatre mid-way through Strange Music label mate “Joey Cool’s” set, although I’m not as familiar with Joey it was evident he can flat out rap, loved being in Australia, and lapped up every second on stage. Joey Cool was great and did an amazing job of warming up the crowd for Tech, he would return later during Tech’s set to perform the smash hit “Face Off”!

Tech took the stage and we had managed to find our way up front, there is no other way. Haha! What better way to kick off a show then with “Stamina”? The ultimate crowd hype up, short, sharp , and delivered on point! Transitioning into Red Nose before absolutely tearing the place up with Riot Maker, now being an old school Tech fan I think that may have been my absolute favourite of the night. Catching it live again and bringing back all of those memories of when Tech was sued back in the day, but it wasn’t even during his set, there was an incident in the openers (Prozak’s) performance. We have discussed this with both Tech and Prozak at some point over the history of the show (you’d have to go back through the archives to find it). The fact that he has the ability to basically kick off a show with a song like “Riot Maker” shows that he has a massive back catalogue of hits!

Tech asked the crowd if they minded him performing some old stuff, some in-between stuff, and some new stuff. You know they were more than on board!

Splitting it up into three sections – The King, the Clown, and the G!

Trying to find a highlight was similar to trying to pick a favourite child, a very difficult thing to do. Being a massive fan of his earlier albums Anghellic and Absolute Power, I would probably lean towards the songs he performed from them (just). As stated above though, “Riot Maker” taken from “Eveready” was phenomenal with other highlights including but not limited to “Straight Out the Gate”, “Einstein” , “The Beast”, “Caribou Lou”, “Ronald” (it was great seeing Tech do his verse after watching Falling In Reverse’s “Ronnie Radke” perform his parts just a couple of weeks prior at Rod Laver Arena), “Face Off” (with Joey Cool, it was also very awesome to hear them speak on The Rock being a Technician), and “Fragile” (you can check parts of this out on our social media pages, just amazing) but really there was never a dull moment or a time to duck to the bar and get a drink. It was solid from start to finish, at one-point Tech even brought a fan on stage which clearly made the guys night, and he did an amazing job. On top of this Tech took requests and just jumped right into them flawlessly, these included “Areola”, “Ima Tell”, and “Red Kingdom”, it was just so much fun to sing along to!

It should be noted how great it was seeing the Snake and Bat logo in the streets of Melbourne once again, so many Technicians were out and about as you would imagine. Let’s hope the wait isn’t too long for Tech to return Down Under, there is clearly a strong market here for him. A fantastic night out and we cannot wait to do it all again soon!

We caught up with Tech prior to the tour to discuss his thoughts on Australia, give him an Australian slang challenge, collecting Horror merchandise, working with The Rock and so much more. Take a look/listen to the interview here: