The evening starts off with the dulcet tones of Progressive Black Jazz by Norwegian band The Shining, who fire up the audience with their songs and improv-sections; at least, I don’t recall ‘Fisheye’ being quite that long. The minimalist lighting which features almost exclusively black and white create a great atmosphere, and combined with the thick distortion of their sound it almost feels like everything is covered in a layer of volcanic ash. One of the most impressive feats of this band is how happy and groovy their music sounds, varying from sludgy to peppy within songs. In fact, the parts that don’t sound like prog or jazz are supremely danceable. Then again, with saxophone solos like that I don’t see how they could not be. The audience is a little divided on this opening act. While part of the audience is pleased as punch, the rest have that deer-in-the-headlights look of complete and utter bewilderment that is common among the unwary at a Shining concert.
The Shining is a truly unique band with great stage presence, and their promise of a new album sounds like music to our ears.
The second band of this evening is Periphery, with energetic frontman Spencer Sotelo, who is sporting pink hair and a The Shining shirt. While I love Sotelo’s stage presence, his voice goes a bit thin when he sings in high range, and since he sings almost exclusively in high range this means his voice falls away against the rest of the music. I would have liked to hear lower tones, as he has a very warm and powerful voice in that region. Luckily his screams were very audible over the nice and dense sound this band creates. Some of the songs have no clear ending, and the blackout between songs takes away a lot of the energy and enthusiasm; even the large amount of fans can’t keep the party going throughout all the silence. Similarly, a long and very silent intro halfway through the set detracts from the overall performance. With three guitarists we do get the occasional guitar solo, but although they have a full clean sound, the solos themselves are not spectacular.
While Periphery might not be my favourite kind of band, some of their songs are really catchy, and they obviously have a good amount of fans in the audience. They have the stage-presence and audience interaction parts completely nailed.
There are few people as capable of turning a concert into a complete show as Devin Townsend. As evidence, there is the opening of tonight’s show: Ziltoid The Omniscient. For those of you not familiar with ZTO, this is an inter-medial approach at storytelling with music, lyrics, and webisodes linking together to form a complete narrative. The opening video at tonights show is in fact the first episode of ZiltoidTV videos that led up to the Z2 album. It is a sort of SciFi puppet show in which an alien studies earth and humanity. But Ziltoid is not merely an introduction, there are also songs where the projections sing along with the live performance.
Devin Townsend himself may say he’s not very cool, but from the first moment he walks out he is incredibly likeable. Not only is he charismatic, he really seems to be enjoying every minute, and even dons a party-hat he received from a member of the audience.
Tonight we have a special guest, Anneke van Giersbergen, and since Devin has recently had the flu, Anneke takes over on some songs. Since these lines are not written to her voice, some of the deeper sound fades into the rest of the music and leaves mostly sharper edges. However, she still does an excellent job and especially the blend of Anneke and Devin is pure magic. Their voices balance together so nicely in power and tone.
After the first bad segue Devin seems to deliberately make each following one even worse, and the result is a number of hilariously disconnected song-introductions. The music itself is really catchy and has a good variety between soft and heavy while still making sense stylistically. The guitar sound is delightfully heavy and very satisfying to listen to. The songs are from a wide range of albums and by the look of the audience’s enthusiasm every single one was a well-chosen favourite.
The Devin Townsend is phenomenon. The combination of SciFi, geekery, bad jokes, and a front man with a personality that goes on for miles makes this a truly one-of-a-kind experience.
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WORDS LORRAINE LYSEN
PHOTOGRAPHY: SUSANNE A. MAATHUIS