Progressive nation, Wembley 10/10/2009

I had a pleasant surprise yesterday. Let me detail a little.
In 2002 DtreamTheater toured Europe and visited also Bucharest but I wasn’t able to attend. Similarly, this summer Opeth played at Artmania festival in Sibiu and I wasn’t there to watch them. These two are my favourites

Now as I am currently in the UK, I had noticed that they were going to play at Wembley Arena. A friend kindly helped me to book a ticket…and there I was

The show started at 6.15 PM. As I was afraid of arriving too late and having to queue for a long time, I arrived at Wembley Arena at 3.15 PM At first glance it looks really impressive. A nice mild weather completed this. Had a beer and watched the sky, curious and relaxed, waiting for the show.

At 17.30 we all entered the Arena. My first impression was that it was kind of small and somehow not up to the expectations.

Here is a detailed summary of the gig.

The setlist was full, Unexpect and Bigelf completing it.
At exactly 6.15 PM, Unexpect started their heavy performance. I wasn’t impressed at all. Seems they’re promoting some sort of Gothic metal. Nice piano intermezzos accompanied by cymbals, but otherwise nothing impressive. Too heavy, not at all melodic (except those piano parts). I even felt sort of mercy for them, they seemed somehow desperate to impress. I endured this patiently, knowing that the gods would follow
At around 6.40 Bigelf started their part. While undoubtedly more melodic that Unexpect, they didn’t impress me either. However, this is a band that you can listen too.
A break followed…and then…OMG! Opeth started with Windowpane. Impressive, as always. Now this song is very good anyways, but they did a wonderful performance out of it. Once the song finished, Mikael greeted us and said they were going to “sing a song that is a masterpiece”. We all laughed. Then they played something really heavy – The Lotus Eater. Again then some remarks from Mikael. He seemed a little arrogant to me, but ….um… the band performed really well, so I got over it easily. Then a surprise: they played ‘Harlequin Forest’, a grim, heavy song, one of my favorites. At this point the crowd exploded. Me included. Again, wonderful live performance from Opeth. 5 stars. Especially Martin Axenrot (drums):). A side note: the drumming kit seemed more professional that those used by the other two bands. Sound was really good. After this song Mikael did some other arrogant, even sexist remarks and then they played ‘Deliverance’. Now imagine that the entire Arena exploded. The song was played just perfectly. They even did a solo introduction to it, by playing the first part only with guitars, without the drums. I almost didn’t recognize the song when they played the intro.
Opeth ended their show with ‘Hex Omega’ which is a very sensitive, beautiful song by itself. Warm rounds of applauses for the band.
A longer break followed while DreamTheater were preparing the scene and doing rehearsals. The rehearsal was behind a curtain but you could hear it very well. Jordan Rudess was intensively playing the piano. At some point Petrucci did ‘As I am’ with acoustic guitar and a woman voice did the lyrics. Sounded very well, but I didn’t understand why they did it. Their performance began at around 9PM after a long break. Impressive from the start. Of course, it started with ‘A Nightmare to Remember’ as they did for the whole 2009 tour. Curtain was up while Jordan Rudess played the piano introduction. And it fell down when the riffs and drums started. Unlike the other bands, DreamTheater also had three medium sized screens displaying each of the band members alternatively. At first glance, the drumming kit was really …BIG. Mike Portnoy always had this obsession of drum monsters. It came up at Wembley as well:). The screens were also displaying contrived videos supposedly complementing the lyrics.
After ‘A Nightmare to Remember’ they got back to their roots: 2 songs from ‘Awake’. ‘The Mirror’ and ‘Lie’. These 2 are meant to be played as a single, as we all know, and that’s how DT played them yesterday night too. Impressive guitar riffs and solos from John Petrucci.
Then they played ‘Prophets of war’ displaying the most suggestive lyrics at the chorus on the three screens: Time to change, Fight the fear, Find the truth, Time for change. Of course we all sang with the band. Then they played ‘The Dance of Eternity’. Jordan Rudess was at some points playing the keyboard as if it had been a guitar. He did it well, though
At this point Michael did a drum solo. He also invited the three other drummers (from Unexpect, Bigelf and Opeth) to play along with him. A powerful, yet short drum demonstration, which he called ‘Percussive Nation 2009′.
Then they played ‘Wither’ from ‘Black Clouds and Silver Linings’. Not my favorite song, but they did it well. ‘Take the Time’ and ‘The Count of Tuscany’ completed the show. For ‘Take the Time’, Michael Portnoy also sang the first verse. Ambitious guy, isn’t he?

Overall Opeth and DreamTheater did it great, as expected. I even wished they were the only two bands on the set list: they could have played more songs this way.

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