If, at the end of this year, Thursday night’s Dresden Dolls show is not on my top 10 concerts list, I will have either lost my mind or had the best year ever in 30-plus years of concert-going.

The duo of keyboardist-singer Amanda Palmer and drummer Brian Viglione merged new wave cabaret with rock bombast for a performance that was nearly overwhelming in its power and precision.

The pair took the stage ntered wearing black masks, trench coats and peaked military caps, an appropriately sinister look for opening number “In the Flesh?,” Pink Floyd’s ugly tale of a deranged musician flirting with fascism. With just drums and electric keyboard, the Dolls created a sound as massive as Floyd’s.

The duo doffed their cloaks and roared into “Girl Anachronism,” a speedy, quirky number of the sort Sparks were known for in the mid-’70s, although with blacker-than-black humor. Palmer’s first-person account of a self-destructive woman brought to life by her lurching stabs at her keyboard.

Both Palmer and Viglione have backgrounds in theater, and both put it to good use in the intimate setting of the Tampa Theatre. Palmer became a vengeful lover, a madwoman or a wounded child with the slightest shift in facial expression. Viglione was the menacing comic foil, an impossibly long-limbed combination of Keith Moon and Joel Grey’s master of ceremonies from “Cabaret.”

Thankfully, the Dolls knew when to turn off the theatrics and communicate directly with the crowd, acknowledging the audience’s non-stop enthusiasm as well as the venue, the ornate decor of which was well-suited to the band’s performance. (And how many groups whose music draws comparisons to Kurt Weill would play a mid-set cover of the Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)”?)

The group’s musicianship was extraordinary, alternately muscular and delicate. The interaction between the two was nearly telepathic - watching them mimic a malfunctioning machine in the middle of “Coin-Operated Boy” sent many a jaw dropping. And when the set concluded with a phenomenal version of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs,” I had to ask if I’d actually witnessed a show that amazing or simply dreamed it.

The opening acts were no slouches, either. Two Ton Boa had a theatricality not too dissimilar from the Dolls and an unusual two-bass guitar, drums and vocals lineup. Singer Sherry Fraser possesses the most remarkable voice in recent memory. A version of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” took on Grace Slick and won, while the final number featured her chill-inducing, wordless soprano.

Tampa’s Win Win Winter, clad mostly in jeans and T-shirts, was the odd band out, sartorially. But its music was rich and strong and at times hypnotic. Think of Grandaddy without the smug pretensions or My Morning Jacket without the sometimes jamming and you’re in the neighborhood. Electric piano provided a soulful grounding as the guitars and vocals flowed from melodic to more raw expression.