My rock concert schedule is once again in lockstep with GOP headlines. This time, I’m faced with the choice of reviewing the Carnival of Madness or discussing the GOP convention. My selection should not surprise you.
I missed the entire opening performance, New Medicine, and most of the second performance, Cavo. I’d never seen New Medicine and I’ve seen Cavo previously, but that was before I started doing concert reviews in the past couple years. Having missed all/most of these performances, I won’t review them. Rock shows that start at 5 on weekdays are hard for people who have first-shift jobs to be on time for.
In any event, Halestorm was up soon after Cavo finished. The arena was pretty much as full as it was going to get for the evening by the time Halestorm started, which I wouldn’t realize until later for obvious reasons (my crystal ball is broken). As you may know, I was only exposed to Halestorm a few weeks ago when they opened for Avenged Sevenfold, which I reviewed here. The strong talent and energetic stage presence I highlighted then were all on display here again. They were on for about 45 minutes this time around, as well. The set list was slightly different, but included Love Bites (So Do I), Mz. Hyde, I Miss the Misery, Freak Like Me, Rock Show, You Call Me a Bitch (Like It’s a Bad Thing), and Here’s to Us from their second album, along with It’s Not You and I Get Off from their first album. The excellent Familiar Taste of Poison performance was not repeated this time around, but we were instead treated to Break In as a piano duet between Lzzy Hale and Evanescence’s Amy Lee. Yes, you read that right. Two of the best female rock vocalists out there today did a duet. This was an unbelievable performance and somewhat ironic for me because I did connect the two to a small degree in my last review (which was before I knew Halestorm would be at this show). Like I tweeted after the performance, Halestorm killed it.
Chevelle followed Halestorm and was on for about an hour or so. This was not my first time seeing Chevelle, either. I saw them a couple years ago, again before I started doing reviews. Both times, they put on a solid musical performance, but the stage presence wasn’t there for me. Audience interaction was rare and awkward when it did happen. We heard mostly newer songs from Chevelle, along with their classics that I prefer, such as Send the Pain Below and Comfortable Liar. They also did a sort of acoustic, sing-along version of The Red. It deserves credit for creativity and experimentation, but I don’t really think it worked. For whatever reason, the crowd didn’t seem too into it and I wasn’t really feeling it. Maybe it works most other nights and this was just an off night for whatever reason, but I wouldn’t know since I’ve only seen them twice and they only did this once. Hey, it’s an opinion blog. I’m just calling it like I see it (or hear it, in this case).
With that, Evanescence came on. They played for about an hour and a half or so. This was my first time seeing them despite nearly a decade as a fan. Evanescence put out a new album nearly a year ago, so this show spent a lot of time on that album. I’d guess they played over half of that new album (Made of Stone, The Other Side, among others), along with a few songs from The Open Door (like Call Me When You’re Sober, and Weight of the World). They also played songs from Fallen (some of which overlap with Origin, but they did not play anything that was from only Origin and they did play songs just from Fallen, so let’s simplify and say they all came from Fallen). The Fallen songs included Imaginary, Bring Me To Life, and Whisper.
They opened the show with What You Want, the first track from their new album, and they followed that right up with Going Under, the first track from Fallen. Starting off that way was genius because it engaged both the ‘new’ and ‘old’ fans right off the bat (I am decisively in the old camp, yet I’m still under 30). Their lighter performances were generally more riveting for me, including Lost in Paradise and My Heart is Broken from the new album. Their best performance was, by far, closing the show with a piano and My Immortal. This was a haunting and powerful performance between the piano, the lyrics, and Amy Lee’s voice. It’s not a jab at the rest of the show so much as heavy praise for this last song. Talk about ending strong. Overall, Evanescence’s performance was solid and memorable. Personally, I would have preferred more from Fallen (Hello, My Last Breath, Tourniquet, maybe?) and even something from Origin (Anywhere, perhaps?), but that’s just me.
So, here’s the bottom line. Halestorm stole the show. Both the Break In duet and My Immortal to close the show were absolutely spectacular and unforgettable performances. This show was well worth the money, even though I missed the first two bands.
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