Aaaand I'm back! amazing show!
The first part had some lenghty songs so I didn't even realize that, in the end, they only played 6 songs. Ballsy move from them to fill it to the brink with new songs, and to find room for a bigass epic like A Nightmare to Remember (didn't expect it immediately second!). Also I was sure that Pale Blue Dot would have been the encore but instead it closed the first set.
All the songs went down well, but obviously SFAM was on a whole another level for intensity, energy and crowd response. I'm telling you things you all perfectly know if I mention the initial singalong to Regression, the massive singalong with the Metropolis reprise in the Overture, the wild excitement on the more energetic stuff like the fast section of SDV and Beyond this Life, and the boner every musician got during The Dance of Eternity
Just don't ask me what was happening during The Spirit Carries On, with all the singing along and the lights of the phones on and the "fountains" opened wide it was such an emotional and great moment that you had to be there to understand it. I'm sure you all experienced something similar at your show.
About SFAM' presentation and differences...
Things I liked: the new intro and the animations (Victoria is quite a babe, Julian had a pornstache and Edward seemed like a young teen but whatever, the animations were cool), the mini drum solo in Fatal Tragedy, and the tribute to fallen musicians during Through Her Eyes.
Things I can get along with: the ending of Through Her Eyes being all acoustic and not going electric like on the DVD.
Things that got me "WTF": the ending of Finally Free. The hell was that? I get that you can't always do the same thing and that Mangini can do wonders with the drums but some of the choices were baffling to say the least. Bring back the One Last Time reprise like on the DVD!
As for James... he was quite good. I'd say he was good in the first set, and great during SFAM. We all know what his tone, pronunciation and enunciation is like live. That's not going to change. But he was quite solid in the first set, and I never had a cringey moment, there was not a single instance where I thought "geez, James, what are you doing here? why are you struggling so much?"... not a single moment.
And during SFAM he was on fire!!! he seemed even better in tone and in power, and he was great on all the song, with his usual and untouched passion during the soft moments. He was even quite good as a frontman, for example he got the crowd going during the "Whoo oh oh oh, ho ho" part of Fall Into the Light, and got everyone to double clap during the "WHA WHA" part of Home's intro.
I'm sure that if you listen closely to a bootleg of the show you'll notice some failings here and there, but it doesn't matter - in the heat of the moment he sounded good, so he performed fine. As I said - good in the first set, great in the second. And the rest of the guys were their usual monsters of skill as usual.
After 20 years of seeing DT the worst thing that could happen would be walking away thinking "meh, they got sloppy" or "geez, James can't really hold it anymore". Luckily and gladly those thoughts were the farthest from my mind and I enjoyed the living hell out of it all!!!