Concert was fun last night...
Not a huge fan of the shape of the venue. Stage is in the corner, you have to push through to get around the corner to see the stage... the lighting was horrible, the stage was like a foot high so it's hard to see the band playing if you aren't right up front (you can basically only see their heads from the back). But there is a bit of a charm to a small place like that. It is fairly intimate with no barrier between the band and fans. I thought the sound was great (for both bands). Nice people working the venue. Kind of sucked that the show didn't start until 8:30pm. Felt like that could have been pushed up an hour or at least 30 minutes. I didn't get home until almost 1:30am
Anyway, Arch Echo was fine. I'm not sure I get that they are more energetic than Haken? They have one guitarist who was pretty active on stage, but just kept reminding me of a cheap version of Tim Henson. Not that he was bad, he was really good in terms of playing and stage presence, but he literally stole his look (minus the tattoos). I thought they were overall decent. Some fun moments, but nothing really special. The crowd seemed into them though, for the most part. It actually felt like the place was most packed for them too. Unless people just pushed up for Haken, the venue back was PACKED for the second half of Arch Echos set and it never felt that packed for Haken.
Haken came on around 9:45 and ended around 11:15pm. I had gone out for a smoke between bands so when I got back in, I was stuck in the back wtihout much of a view. Therefore, I got pretty poor quality video for my standards. Oh well, I had fun and wasn't jam packed around the corner. The setlist was the same for this tour, but we got treated with some sort of drum issue near the end of Taurus to start the show that lead to them performing the end of the song again! I love stuff like that. So cool how they did the whole song and then just said lets do that ending again
I thought the abridged version of The Architect was perfect. Kind of like the "get to the point" version of the song, maybe better than the original. I eventually moved to the side of the stage and realized that was a WAY better spot because after a few people left, I ended up about 3 feet away from Richard. So in some ways, for me, the show really started with Elephants Never Forget. Which was awesome live. But for the people who say Haken are kind of stiff on stage, I agree other than Ross. Ross was VERY active on stage. Harder to see from the back, but up close, he was interacting with the band, moving around, interacting with the fans. He was honestly the highlight of the show for me. He sounded good and was energetic. We also made tons of eye contact too. Richard basically was playing with his eyes shut it seemed and had zero interaction with us right next to him. Pete looked wayyy too serious on stage
I yelled for Connor during Elephants when it was the heavy bass part and got a smile out of him. Celestial Elixir was pretty incredible live. First time I've got to see it. I thought the crowd was mostly dead for Haken, from the back, but up close, you could see the front row (many of which were females) absolutely going wild for Haken. I still kind of felt the crowd overall was a bit dead, but at least up front I got to feel that energy in the room. For me, Messiah Complex was the highlight of the night. Absolutely incredible way to end the show. I've had the song stuck in my head since leaving.
I can share more when I go through my stuff tonight or something, but the only song I recorded was Lovebite and my video is pretty bad so watch at your own risk since I was still in the back for this. My clips from up close are WAY better, but I haven't gone through and posted any of them yet.
Haken - Lovebite LIVE @ Le Poisson Rouge New York City NY 5/11/2023
Topic: Haken thread v. "Evening With" tour (some set spoilers) (Read 64809 times)
