London Gig Review and Red Haired Girl :P

Narcoloth

Narcoloth

Hypnagogic Harvester
Jun 4, 2002
248
0
16
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Greece/UK
www.hypnagogia.com
A bit surprised that I will be the one to start this thread!

So here it goes: Overall :Great!!

It was only the 2nd time I saw them live ( strange!), first one was back in lil'ol' greece. (yes another greek here!)

I think I am gonna divide the review in pros and cons:

PROS:

- Lots of people, great atmosphere! Half of them were greeks :S dont know if that's good or bad :p

- Great performance and amazing sound (except from when Vinnie played the acoustic , you couldn't really hear it). Anathema is one of the bands that are even better live than in their albums. Great dynamics! really building up and delivering the goods ;)

- Ship of fools. Cool band. especially in the beginning. Started to get a bit boring with no vocals for someone like me who's never heard anything out of them before, but they were cool. especially the bass player! :headbang:

CONS:

- 1st support band. Thine... err... dont know... i think they didnt fit at all, plus the vocals were so loud you couldnt hear anything else.

- Setlist! don't know.... I think we all missed the oldies! And I dont mean oldies as in serenates or pentecost, I mean oldies as in silent enigma ,eternity, even alternative 4! :S only one track out of each one more or less... tsk tsk... not even a dying wish! that's a crime. The setlist more or less comprised of judgement and AFDTE tunes. Judgement might even be my fave album, but I think that the difference with the AFDTE was really evident, even live. It somehow feels that the guitars are not the main thing any more, its the vocals. It should be the same IMHO

- No Encore... :(
 
Oh yeah! forgot to mention the red haired girl of the title of the thread. Well she was the highlight of the whole show! visually at least... ;) She knew the band, so she might as well be in the forum, if u read this, u rock :headbang:

PS as always, seing the boyfriends of these girls is rather frustrating. nothin' personal mate, good 4 u!
 
Awesome, awesome gig! Thanks to the Greeks again for adding a bit of atmosphere. Many London gigs would be dead without the Greek contingent going crazy at the stage front. (well the certainly liven up the Power Metal gigs I go to).

Best of the 6 Anathema gigs I've seen so far (3 at the LA2/Mean Fiddler)

Didn't catch Ship of Fools, but they only played for 20 minutes.

Thine - featuring Danny Cavanagh. I watched this from the upstairs bar where I could hear the music but not the vocals -or rather vocal samples (well that's what they sounded like). Now I'm a big fan of Porcupine Tree and a lot of the material played hear sounded like the heavier end of Porcupine Tree. There was some dancy samples here and there, but you can find that in some of Steven Wilson's (P Tree's mainman) output. I liked what I heard and will investigate them further.

There was a 15 minute changeover scheduled between each of the bands and given the gigs curfew at 10:30PM, the crew did a great job to make sure things kept moving and Anathema came onstage more or less on time at 9PM.

The set pretty much centered on the 'A Fine Day to Exit' album and rather cleverly the band broke up the tunes into three segments, fitting a few oldies in between the newer songs. The performance was very slick I thought and the songs order was very well arranged. Vinnie didn't say much between songs, except where dedicating a song such as 'Angelica', "This one is for my friend who've come down from Birmingham", or explaining why there was nothing new being played "Its almost a year since we last played here and we've released nothing" or thanking the audience.

Highlights for me were 'Angelica', 'Fragile Dreams' (of course) followed by 'Inner Silence' and 'Forgotten Hopes'. All of the AFDTE songs sounded way better live too, which was great as I've struggled to get a lot of enjoyment out of the CD compared with 'AIV' and 'Judgement'. At the end the band ran out of time and couldn't play an encore. Jamie came onstage to explain and promised that they would be back in the new year.

Nice lightshow too - much better than the bog-standard lighting supplied by the venue.

Setlist:
Release
Pressure
Underworld
Forgotten Hopes
Destiny is dead
Angelica
Looking Outside Inside
Leave No Trace
Judgement
Panic
A Fine Day To Exit
Temporary Peace
Fragile Dreams
Inner Silence
One Last Goodbye
2000 & Gone (slightly improvised)

No photos because the Astoria/Mean Fiddler doormen are getting all heavy these days and my Digital Camera is too big to fit down my pants - some folks did manage to sneak some in though.
 
I think Thine were on first and Danny played with Ship of Fools which is Les's band. Damn I wish I would have seen them:cry: I nearly got a Ship Of Fools tattoo years ago. Theres still time, and space!"
 
Yes, that's it, and I was wondering... Ship of fools did play 2nd.

As for the light show it was ok, but I wouldn't say it was great. I really hate it when the just shine a huge white light to the audience (like in fragile dreams for example). It really spoils the atmosphere!

Another thing I forgot to mention is that I rather got pissed off at some 15 yr olds who really seemed to be there because they thought that it was a nu metal gig. They behaved accordingly. and seemed to get everyone around them pissed off too, so it wasnt just me :)

And as for the greeks, I will second chazzyf's view after all, that they really give spirit to the UK gigs.
 
As you can see, Anathema could play here every month and easily fill the venue up! This little shity country loves this band a lot!

I think it's time for a live album too. I have to agree with all these guys saying that some songs are way better live. So why not?
 
It's also one of the best songs from AFDTE...( together with afdte and temporary peace). Another song that i would die to hear live is regret! I begged Danny for this one to play it in Crete but i wasn't lucky enough...maybe next time?
 
Yes, that's it, and I was wondering... Ship of fools did play 2nd.
Click to expand...
Well I was going off the notice as posted at the entrance, which had Ship of fools listed to play 7:40 - 8:00, Thine from 8:15 - 8:45 and Anathema 9:00 - 10:30. So the 2nd band, with Danny was Ship of Fools then?!?

As for the light show it was ok, but I wouldn't say it was great. I really hate it when the just shine a huge white light to the audience (like in fragile dreams for example). It really spoils the atmosphere!
Click to expand...
Ok :) but it was better than the usual shitty selection of red, yellow, blue, purple etc lights that make it really difficult to get any decent photos. The rotating red lights weren't the normal.

I'm totally with you over shining a white light straight at the audience - it sucks.
 
glad was there. the show was wicked and the whole gay population of Suffolk had gathered for the occasion.
i just wanted to spot someone that was not there

placebo sucks!:lol:
 
Amazing gig! my first anathema gig, and I haven't heard much of them before going to the gig in the first place, if thruth be told. But I must say they are one of my favorite bands right now, after the gig
 
Did they not play Sleepless or Comfortably numb at London???

I've just got back home from home & I have to say that Anathema were on top form!!!
Easily one of the top few performances I've seen from them.
I remember blathering at Danny afterward too - damn Rios' Absinthe!!

Ship of fools were cool, good music to play pool to :D

& Thine have changed an awful (being the operative word) lot in the last 5 years - they used to be metal, now they're a poor indie band.

Originally posted by chazzyf
Setlist:
Release
Pressure
Underworld
Forgotten Hopes
Destiny is dead
Angelica
Looking Outside Inside
Leave No Trace
Judgement
Panic
A Fine Day To Exit
Temporary Peace
Fragile Dreams
Inner Silence
One Last Goodbye
2000 & Gone (slightly improvised)
Click to expand...
 
Hmm... I really hope they won't "forget" A Dying Wish when they come to Belgium :cry:
No Sleepess too I see....
Well, I guess I'm just nagging right now :p but I see there was a good thing too: Angelica and Judgement!!
But then again, the list goes on, no Eternity III, no Empty (which is fucking great live, much better than the cd version), etc.
Yep, too much AFDTE stuff...
 
Originally posted by Forlorn Hope
But then again, the list goes on, no Eternity III, no Empty (which is fucking great live, much better than the cd version), etc.
Yep, too much AFDTE stuff...
Click to expand...

i'm glad they're not playing covers anymore :)
 
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