Within Temptation supported by Anneke Van Geisbergen 9/11/11

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I usually don’t turn up to a gig 15 minutes before the doors opened, but this time I did, and much to my surprise, it did not mean we had a rubbish view of the stage. Since I’m 5 foot 10, it’s pretty hard for me to get a rubbish view wherever I am, nevertheless, we were about 5 rows from the front, which I was pretty pleased about.

I was a little sceptical, since I’d never heard of Anneke. I had heard in passing of her old band ‘The Gathering’ but never got round to listening to any of their material. Knowing that I was going to see her live, I thought it would be best to try and get a taste of what she was all about and listen to some tracks off her latest album as a solo artist. To be honest, I wasn’t blown away, having only listened to one song after that I became uninterested.

However, don’t think I wrote her off completely!

The first song ‘Fury’ was one of the songs I enjoyed the most, a jolly upbeat pop-rock song that was a great choice as an opener, as it is one of the stronger songs in the set list in my opinion. Live, Anneke’s vocals were faultless, exactly how they sound on the record, and she has certainly picked a talented band, even though the arrangements and melodies aren’t particularly challenging, for them to look like no effort at all was needed and still play the songs flawlessly takes some talent for sure.

‘Fury’ was closely followed by a track called ‘Circles’ which was a nice contrast to ‘Fury,’ slower in tempo, this ballad was stripped of drums and bass, leaving just the rhythm and lead guitarists to accompany Anneke. ‘Circles’ is a pretty song and live shows Anneke to be a real voice of an angel.

Another of my favourite songs from the set list was ‘Feel Alive’ which was the single off Anneke’s new album, even after the gig when I got back to my house, I was listening to that song over and over again, along with ‘Fury’, so much so, that a certain music streaming application won’t let me play it anymore!

Overall, Anneke was really well received by the crowd, even with one fan shouting “we’re dancing!!” to her, which she seemed very pleased about. She seemed very grateful to be able to play to so many people and honoured that she was the support for such an awesome band as Within Temptation. I would have loved to have met her, as she seemed a very humble and sweet woman.

Then we had about 20 minutes waiting around again, before Within Temptation came on, as the stage needed those final adjustments.

Within Temptation – Manchester Academy – 9/11/11

The stage is set, the adrenaline is pumping, and that’s just me. Imagine what the band feels like.

Never before in my life have I seen such a fantastic stage set up, complete with keys and drums on risers and a huge video screen, not to mention fantastic lighting and the sound, it was incredible! Either the Manchester Academy has fantastic acoustics or Within Temptation’s sound engineer is a God of sound.

The lights go down, an old woman appears on the big screen, she is writing. This is the Mother Maiden short film to open ‘Shot in The Dark’. You can’t really prepare yourself for the atmosphere that was created, it was packed to the rafters, and you could feel the anticipation of everyone in the crowd as they eagerly awaited, as did I, the presence of Sharon and the guys. The short film gave me goose bumps; of course I’d seen these short films countless times on my insignificantly small television, in comparison to this beast, but watching it on the big screen made it a million times more awesome. The guys came on stage first to a mass of woops, cheers, claps and then Sharon. She looked amazing, wearing a black corset and black leather-looking leggings with knee high black biker boots. Every so often she would change her jacket, and the first one she wore was the same one as in the Sinéad video. Well since she studied fashion design, you would expect her to have an amazing dress sense…which she does!

The set basically followed the same order as the new album ‘The Unforgiving’ up until Ice Queen. Accompanying each song was either the music video to the song on the big screen or a special ‘music video’ they had made especially for The Unforgiving Tour.

I might as well mention here that Sharon was struggling with her voice at the beginning, which actually made me really concerned for her. She was so sweet; you could tell it was really pissing her off that her voice kept breaking. Never the less, she was still fantastic, and as the set progressed, her voice became more warmed up, so a few ‘technical’ glitches at the beginning, but I don’t think anyone was bothered. I mean, if Sharon den Adel was in front of you, singing her little heart out, you wouldn’t complain, because she is fantastic, and I must say also, I do prefer her vocal style on ‘The Unforgiving’ compared to the very early Within Temptation material.

They then moved on to play a song from ‘Mother Earth’ one of the singles off that album, and a great crowd pleaser, Ice Queen, with Sharon getting us to do the ‘Ooh’ bits. Up next was The Howling, which again is another great song, and one to which I sung all the words to (as I did to the others) but refraining from singing along too loudly for fear of shattering my friends eardrums who was stood in front of me.

I was a bit gutted that Robert Westerholt, Sharon’s husband, was not going to be playing, and so we wouldn’t get to see him, but Stefan Helleblad is the perfect replacement. Good looks (check), effortless guitar playing skills (check), good stage presence (check). And yes, because I am a girl, of course the first on my check list would be the question ‘Is he good looking?’…no, only joking, I’m not that shallow…

I was really excited to see Stefan and of course Within Temptation’s other newest member, Mike Coolen. Mike is a pure animal on the drums and an absolutely fantastic drummer.

The songs in the set list were the fairly recent ones; the oldest album they went back to was ‘Mother Earth’ with the aforementioned Ice Queen, Deceiver of Fools and Mother Earth. Only two songs were played off ‘The Silent Force’ Angels and Stand My Ground which I was expecting, but I don’t think they would ever get rid of these songs from the set, because they are the more well-known ones off that album.

I liked the way that they opened with most of ‘The Unforgiving’, and then evenly balanced the rest of the set with songs from ‘The Heart of Everything’ and ‘Mother Earth’.were the fairly recent ones; the oldest album they went back to was ‘Mother Earth’ with the aforementioned Ice Queen, Deceiver of Fools and Mother Earth. Only two songs were played off ‘The Silent Force’ Angels and Stand My Ground which I was expecting, but I don’t think they would ever get rid of these songs from the set, because they are the more well-known ones off that album.