This post has nothing at all to do with miniature painting!
Both my brother and I have birthdays in the coming week. Yesterday, in celebration of this, he and I went to London to see Dream Theater and Opeth, who were performing at Wembley Arena as part of DT’s ‘Progressive Nation‘ tour. It was a fine evening indeed.
Travelled as far as Hillingdon by coach, then took the tube to Wembley Park. Journey was uneventful. Tube fare was slightly more than expected. Found venue easily, with about half an hour to spare before doors opened. The venue was quite a good size, I felt. Large enough that you felt part of quite a sizeable crowd, but not so enormous that there wasn’t a sense of intimacy. At a very rough estimate, thee were probably about 8-10 thousand people by the end. Dom and I were about six or seven spaces back from the front.
First act was UnexpecT, an avant-garde metal band from Canada. It took me a couple of songs to get into them (and it felt like it was the same for most of the audience), but once I did they were excellent. Set lasted about half an hour. Bonus points for a nine-string bass.
Next on was Bigelf. Bigelf are basically a 70s psychedelic hard rock band that have got lost in time and somehow ended up in the present day by mistake. Very good stuff. They played for just over half an hour.
I hadn’t heard either of the above bands before, but I enjoyed both, especially Bigelf. I’ll have to check out some more of their stuff in the future.
Next up were Opeth, who were well on form and turned out a cracking set, which ran as follows:
- Windowpane
- The Lotus Eater
- Harlequin Forest
- April Ethereal
- Deliverance
- Hex Omega
This lasted just under an hour, and was absolutely superb. I was particularly pleased when they played Deliverance, which I think is probably my favourite Opeth song.
Had the gig ended at this point, I’d probably still have gone home happy. However, the headliners were still to come. DT’s set consisted of:
- A Nightmare To Remember
- The Mirror
- Lie
- Solo keyboard spot from Jordan Rudess
- Prophets of War
- The Dance of Eternity
- Percussion solo from Mike Portnoy, then duets between him and the drummers from each of the supporting bands, and finally all four drummers playing together.
- Wither
- Take the Time
- Encore: The Count of Tuscany
Of the three things I’d been hoping for (In The Presence of Enemies, any of the longer tracks from the Images and Words album, and Jordan Rudess wigging out on the continuum), I got to see two (no ITPoE), which was good enough. I was quite surprised that everything (besides the solo spots) came from albums I own, despite having only about half of DT’s catalogue. A Nighmare to Remember featured a guest appearance from Mikael Åkerfeldt on growled vocals. This was a definite improvement over Mike Portnoy’s embarrassing efforts on the record, which were something of a blot on the album. The drum solo/duet portion was entertaining. I think Unexpect’s drummer came off best of the three. The chap from Bigelf seemed slightly out of his element, not in that he wasn’t good enough, but just that flashy solos weren’t really his style. Martin Axenrot’s portion began with what seemed to be a competition as to who could play the fastest, most precise blastbeats, and I’d have said that by a whisker it was Portnoy.
Mike Portnoy’s drumkit, incidentally, is a sight to behold. One person can only play about half of it at once, and all the collaborative drumming bits were played on the one kit. I had already seen it in photos and in the making-of video from Systematic Chaos, but it is all the more impressive to see in person.
DT’s set lasted about an hour and a half, until 22.30. Then they did their encore, and the concert finished at about 22.55. A fantastic gig.