High-Energy GusGus Show Promotes a Higher Power

“Adress[sic] your fear,” read the words projected behind the band GusGus early in its performance Friday at the Palace. “God will help you. Love God.”

Though there’s long been a spiritual element to the rave-techno scene, few who went to this show likely expected anything so churchy. But then, despite having just released only its second album, the richly varied “This Is Normal,” this Icelandic music and visual arts collective has already established itself as a group that defies expectations.

The religious theme was introduced via the album’s ominous yet catchy “Starlovers.” As Daniel Agust sang that young people “need love . . . need God . . . need guidance from above,” the words quoted at top flashed over clips from the Rolling Stones’ 1969 Hyde Park concert, edited to resemble a tribal ritual.

From then on, electronic beats (echoes of New Order abounding) perfectly matched striking visuals and projected phrases touting love, God and the tribal heartbeat. But then the on-screen message took an oddly familiar turn--the trite lyrics from “We Are the World!” Was GusGus saying that the cosmic answer really is that simple? Or was the group mocking the reduction of such complex concepts to common denominator pablum? No clue was given. Regardless, fans could dance themselves silly while pondering the polytheological mysteries.