Wow wow wow wow WOW.
All reports I've heard of them not playing well live are so wrong. WOW.
The entire band was on FIRE when I saw them last night. No slip-ups, no bad tunings, everything was perfect. And then Marc - Marc is the shining star of this tour. He nailed every single high note, every key change, all the extremely difficult things like the screams and key changes in Fury of the Storm, that crazy opening wail in Holding On - and the way he ended the concert with that Valley of the Damned outro was just spectacular.
The backing vocals were on fire, too, and the band looked like they were having the time of their lives up there. What bad reports I have read (from the UK gigs recently it seems) must have been due to technical problems, because this was the tightest I'd ever seen the band - and it was one of the tightest performances I've seen by a band in general, honestly. They killed the solos and Marc killed his vocal parts.
What a great night. It was worth the 4-5 hour drive, easily.