We flew over to Stuttgart for the first concert of the tour, and the very first Psychotic Waltz show in 14 years.
This also marks the last time I will book flights to a foreign country in attempt to see Nevermore. First time I did that was the PP show which they canceled to play Europe to support Disturbed (for which they warmed up by playing an extra long headlining show in Helsinki one day after my flight to the US had left from the Helsinki airport). So this time while waiting outside for the doors to open (which happened one hour later than they were supposed to open) one of the venue security guys got out of the venue and he was telling the people waiting for doors to open that nobody knows where Warrel Dane is. The other Nevermore guys were around and they had done a soundcheck and all. Later on they announced on stage that Nevermore will have to cancel because Warrel has missed his flight and won't make it in time. At least the same announcement said that SymX and PW get to play longer sets then so that seemed to make quite a few people cheer.
The opener of the tour is Thaurorod, with Michele Luppi as their singer. They did a pretty decent job for what they are (not my kinda stuff) and Luppi sounded fantastic as expected so it was worth it to come to the venue early just to see him doing his thing. It was definitely good for Thaurorod that the doors opened over an hour late since they had a nice size crowd for an opener.
After Thaurorod's maybe 6 or 7 song set Mercenary got to the stage to play their 45 min set. The people who were worried if it can work live with the new lineup don't worry, they did a great job! The sound wasn't great but in the 2nd row it supposedly was a LOT better than back in the hall which was expected at this venue and with a brand new tour crew. The most positive surprise was Rene's clean vocals! He did a good job with the old songs too, naturally not singing as high as Martin but still sounding good and I believe some of Martin's clean parts were changed to be more non-clean style too but this didn't bother me. So after this performance I could finally believe the vocals on the new album are actually Rene! First it was a little annoying that all the keyboards were played from the backup tapes due to them being a 4 guy band nowadays but after a couple of songs I didn't pay any attention to it really.. Jakob commented to me after the show the show being a bit rusty in his opinion so I'm certainly looking forward to a non-rusty show with the new lineup if this was rusty (I wouldn't have known, except for the sound)! here's the setlist for Mercenary (should be about right, from setlist.fm):
1. Into the Sea of Dark Desires
2. World Hate Center
3. The Endless Fall
4. Through The Eyes Of The Devil
5. In A River Of Madness
6. In Bloodred Shades
7. The Follower
8. Firesoul
So since Nevermore canceled Psychotic Waltz played like 55 mins instead of 45 mins and they did fantastic. In addition to the set Glenn posted above they did "I Of The Storm" which was sweet. To be honest I was very surprised how great the German crowd knew them and how much they got into it, I'm sure the whole band was really happy with the response! Devon was glad to announce on stage that he's really happy to be back with the band and that they're gonna record albums too. Big thumbs up for Brian for committing to such long european tour playing the shows in a wheelchair, that's some commitment right there! Devon (who announced that he really wants to be called Devon still and not Buddy Lackey) sounded very good to me but having seen him live before with Dead Soul Tribe I was still expecting him to sound a little better - although he was saying during the show that it seems to take a long time for him to "get his voice warmed up tonight" or something along those lines so that might have been it.
Apart from the two new pretty cool sounding new songs the SymX show was pretty standard (=Russell is GOD, the guys were playing flawlessly, sound being okay but not great, the tempo in the classics like Of Sins and Shadows and Smoke&Mirrors being a tad too high for my tastes etc). I wish they had used their extra time due to the Nevermore cancellation to play a few more songs though like previously announced. Compared to their setlist they played one song more only and same amount of songs than they played two nights later in Belgium. Seems that last night in Belgium they have also played a 3rd new song called "Heretic" (listed on setlist.fm), wish they had done this in Stuttgart too.
Anyhow all in all it was a great evening even with the Nevermore cancellation, most positive surprise to me was "the new" Mercenary really and I was really happy to see Psychotic Waltz getting such a response!
