Review from last night's show below. For those who don't know, they just kicked off a tour with Armored Saint and Midnight Eternal opening. Last night was the second show (first was in Seattle the night before).
The set:
Guardian
Operation: Mindcrime
Best I Can
Damaged
The Killing Words
The Mission
Silent Lucidity
Empire
Eye 9
Queen of the Reich
Jet City Woman
Take Hold of the Flame
Encore:
Screaming in Digital
Hellfire
Eyes of a Stranger
3 songs from the new record out of 15. But still, not too bad. The issue was, they were delayed getting to the venue (I heard that Saint's bus had broken down), so that led to a late start. Both opening bands cut about 10 minutes and QR left Arrow of Time out of the set.
I was on the fence about whether to go because I knew we would miss most of the openers due to some other commitments. I was hoping we would catch a couple of songs from Saint at the end of their set, but we ended up walking in right after they had just finished.
We had a good spot for QR. Again, the set was the same as Seattle except for cutting Arrow. I thought they were solid and sounded good overall. This was my first time seeing them with Todd, and I was not disappointed. A few minor hiccups, which I will comment on below. But overall, pretty solid. Some notes:
-The set: Overall, no major complaints. I would like the new material represented a bit more. And they should have featured more from Rage and made more out of the fact that that album is 30 years old. They even had 30th anniversary shirts at the merch booth, but I think most fans had no idea. If they commented on it, I would guess they would have sold a lot more shirts. But anyhow, I know it is difficult to figure out what to play when your catalog is that big. Todd even commented on it at one point. But still, that is a problem a lot of older bands have to deal with, and it really isn't that hard to figure out. Related to that...
-Condition Human songs: Notwithstanding what I just said, I do sympathize somewhat with the difficulty of adding a lot of new stuff to the set. You can look at the Seattle set list to see how they mixed them in throughout the show, which I think was smart. Guardian got a decent reaction, but hard to say if that was because of the song or because it was the beginning of the set. When they introduced Eye9, it got decent applause. But the crowd reaction during the song was lukewarm. Honestly, I didn't think it translated that well live and sounded like a bit of a mess. Hellfire, despite being a beast, also seemed to get only lukewarm reaction. Overall, it seemed like maybe half the crowd knew the new stuff. And that's fine. But it is tricky to include much more with that kind of crowd reaction and not have it suck the life out of the show. I hate to say it, but I think 4 songs would have been about the most they could have done without it taking away from the show for many people. And that's sad, because they should be playing 5-6 new songs.
-Minor hiccup on The Killing Words: This was just one of those things. Scott came in late on the second chorus, and it threw everybody off. Half the band was following him, and the other half of the band was on time. They keep on chugging and got back together by the end of the chorus. Rock and roll!
-Parker: Two things here. First off, at least on our side of the house, he was WAY too low in the mix. We could rarely hear him, even on his solos. Second, speaking of solos, he gave a lot more of them back to Mike. Not sure why. But there were songs I was expecting him to solo on that Mike took, and I was wanting Parker to do them. Oh well. He still played well from what I could hear, and really has a nice stage presence. Looked like he was having fun up there.
-Todd: Overall, sounded great. He backed off of a few parts, which is to be expected on such a challenging set. But he tackled some really difficult passages with enthusiasm and pretty much nailed it all. There was a girl dancing and singing next to me for about the first half of the show, and at one point in between songs, she was going on about how good Todd sounded. I turned to her and said, "yeah, he is killing it up there," and she said, "Oh my gosh, YES, he is TOTALLY killing it. This makes me not miss Geoff Tate at all!" I also think he is turning into a pretty good front man in general. Todd did interact a lot with the crowd, but it was mostly during the songs. He kept the talk in between to a minimum. But he said at one point that they were doing that on purpose because there was a strict curfew, and they wanted to play as much music as they could (and the problem had been exacerbated by the late arrival), so I understand.
Again, good show overall. My nitpicks about what they SHOULD be doing still stand. But I still came away a happy customer.