dimanche 12 Oct 2014, 22h31m

With all the fuss surrounding Terminal 5, you'd expect it to be one of the worst venues in New York City. I've been here twice now and both times it not only has been a great venue, it has been one of the better ones in the city at large. The sound is good, the view is good, the layout not bad. I like it. Always have. The venue itself wasn't the problem tonight. Neither were the bands.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first band to come onstage was Amaranthe, who I missed last year because of my job and was looking forward to finally seeing live. Despite a complete lack of backdrops or any fancy equipment, which was kind of cool actually, they put on a really good show. Jake E. and Elize Ryd were great all night long (aside from an off key note or two at the beginning of "Amaranthine") and new growler Henrik Englund was fantastic as well and sounded like a dead ringer for Soilwork's Bjorn "Speed" Strid. Of the songs they performed, the popular "Hunger" was a highlight, and sounded just as great live as I had hoped it would. New song "Trinity" also was fantastic and speaks of great things for their upcoming album Massive Addictive.

After they departed, Within Temptation arrived with a lot more flair. They had backdrops of dragons and LED screens with images. They had a wider portion of the stage. They were amazing. Sharon den Adel seemed to get better with every song and despite a relative lack of material from what I consider to be their magnum opus, The Silent Force, the concert was phenomenal. "Let Us Burn" in particular was unexpectedly great live and may have sold me on the song more than I already was. The call and response of "What Have You Done?" was another highlight and like the other songs that originally featured guest vocalists, the TVs and backing tracks helped bring the song to life very well without the actual guest singer being there. I was legitimately impressed. Overall, their performance was exactly what I hoped it would be, and aside from a few songs I would've included that were absent ("Angels", etc.), their setlist was great as well. There was just one hiccup…

The crowd at this show was frankly just bizarre. Aside from my being surrounded by a drunk foreign couple and a loudmouthed (and somewhat androgynous) girl(?), there were so many people filming with their camera phones that it actually hurt my overall rating of the concert. Now, filming with phones comes with the territory these days. Hell, I did it a little myself at this show. But I know to only take a picture or 2 and then put the phone down again so people behind me don't get their view blocked. Not these people. There were multiple people all around me filming full songs at different points during Within Temptation's set and one Mexican man in front of me filmed the whole show front to back, actually stopping in the middle to change the batteries in his camera before resuming his filming and blocking the view of everyone behind him. I wanted to knock the damn thing out of his hands. Also strange was the complete lack of any mosh pits, which was not necessarily a bad thing, but was strange nonetheless, and marked the first instance of this at a metal show in my concert going career.

My final verdict is that it was a concert well worth seeing, even with the selfish douchebags in the crowd, and both bands seemed to be on fire the whole time and having a lot of fun with it all. If they ever come around again, you, the reader, should see them too.

Amaranthe Setlist

1. Digital World
2. Hunger
3. Invincible
4. 1.000.000 Lightyears
5. Trinity
6. Afterlife
7. Amarathine
8. Call Out My Name
9. Drop Dead Cynical
10. The Nexus

Within Temptation Setlist

1. Paradise (What About Us?)
2. Faster
3. Let Us Burn
4. In The Middle Of The Night
5. Fire And Ice
6. Our Solemn Hour
7. Stand My Ground
8. Summertime Sadness (Lana Del Rey cover)
9. The Cross
10. And We Run
11. Iron
12. See Who I Am
13. Dangerous
14. Edge Of The World
15. What Have You Done?
16. Mother Earth
Encore
17. Covered By Roses
18. Sinéad (Acoustic)
19. Ice Queen

Fri 10 Oct – Within Temptation, Amaranthe
Amaranthe
Within Temptation