Angels fall first
I went to the concert of After Forever and Nightwish in the Heineken Music Hall
yesterday. Both bands I saw for the third time, so time for some observations.
After Forever is considered an one in a dozen gothic-metal band by a lot of metalfans. I do not agree with this vision, especially their last album, Invisible Circles, has some very strong songwriting material and I do really like it. Floor is a talented singer with a lot of possibilities, the band decent at least.
Their gig was a very special one, they played with old gorefest drummer/Arjen Lucassen' companion Ed Warby. After one number Floor announced their own drummer has cancer and has to stay in the hospital. This was quite a shock for the audience. The rest of the performance was delivered in a special, strange atmosphere, with an "Andre"-shouting audience, a crying (not disturbingly) singer and a different really powerful drummer. The band was good though.
Compared to the (light, fireworks and water) show from Nightwish, the lightning for After Forever was in my opinion too shallow. I understand that they were the support act, but this was a bit embarrassing, some more nice light effects and darker hall would have added a lot, while they definitely would not outshine Nightwish in show. Sound was good though, especially compared to the other halls of this size (Brabanthallen, Ahoy, Jaarbeurshallen, Statenhallen).
The headliner Nightwish is professional. No really, they make less mistakes then Marco Borsato (I guess). Perhaps too professional. A bit more jamming would have been nice. Tuomas, the keyboard player is the composer and writes almost all music. In previous gigs, he was also (after Tarja), the most visible element on stage. Yesterday he was not. This is a shame, because the rest of rather weak. His (very small) improvisations sound weird and his timing is rather a-musical at times. On their albums, you do not hear this (his guitar parts, written by the keyboard player, are nice and original, thus sound fresh on CD). Playing a Pink Floyd cover (High Hopes) however, is not very smart if your guitar player does not play equal or better than David Gilmour. Since the Century Child album, there are some additional vocal parts for the bass-player. On CD these parts work really well, live they were always false. But not this night! Despite the vodka, Marco sang really well.
Perhaps I am nitpicking. Nightwish is a world-class band and they gave a very good show. However, they are doing this for a long time already, so it is time to raise the bar a bit :-). I had a very nice musical evening!
[Permalink] -- Filed under: [music] [concert]