On a bitingly cold Tuesday night it was good to see the ‘People of the North’ turn out in very good numbers for the arrival of the finest Dutch export – Within Temptation
Although the 13,700 capacity First Direct Arena wasn’t sold out, for a school night it was around 80% full with a very good mix of old and young. Proof that WT have a very good age range of fans.
With around a 20 year old back catalogue of tracks to choose from it must be a hard job to pick everyone’s favourites. For me it was a more melodic set rather than a rock set. I was hoping for more from The Unforgiving and Hydra albums, Sinead, Iron, Dangerous to name but a few, as I only discovered Within Temptation around 2014 when Planet Rock played ‘Faster’ and even by then they were on their 6th album release, so I was very late to the party. I thought then that ooh these sound good, so I joined the WT army of fans with Hydra and The Unforgiving being played constantly in the car for ages and still are to this day, hence my love for those albums.
So, onto the show, the stage set was adorned with giant Greek style columns and Sharon den Adel enters to a blazing red stage and with what’s happening in the world right now it was only appropriate to start with ‘We go to War’ which I am sure all of us hope we don’t. This followed into other Bleed Out tracks, namely the title track ‘Bleed out’, ‘Ritual’ and Wireless.
Now WT do have a habit of collaboration tracks which you often wonder if you will ever hear live or would they just do them without the 2nd singer and sing it their way. Nope, enter Ukrainian vocalist Alex Yarmak for a duet singing ‘A fools Parade’ and former Nightwish leading lady Tarja Turunen dueting 3 times with ‘The Promise’ her own song ‘I feel Immortal’ and returning later in the set with ‘Paradise (What about us’.) Sharons passion for help those affected in Ukraine came to the fore with large QR code as a digital backdrop for donating to the Dronefall Charity. For me it is only the innocents who suffer in any conflict, if the political elite were to send their own kids to war more often I am sure they would talk 1st, but that maybe just me.
Ramping up to a dramatic final frenzy, the song that got me loving WT ‘Faster’ really got the crowd bouncing then straight into the powerhouse latinesque track ‘Our Solemn Hour’. Sadly the night had to end somewhere and after about 90 minutes that time had come with the closing tracks ‘All I Need’ and it seemed that everyone was using the torches on their
phones and swaying their arms to this, it was almost like being ain a cave with fireflies, then as mentioned earlier ‘Paradise with Tarja and finally taking their career almost full circle ending with Mother Earth.
All in all a superb night that left the 10,000+ audience leaving with a lot of happy memories and judging by the amount of phones on display YouTube is about to be filled with homemade musical videos.
