Evanescence – Manchester Apollo

Evanescence seem to have swan-dived into 2003, for some reason. The music fits in with the general “nu-metal” style of bands like Linkin Park et al, only with female vocals. I’ve enjoyed the album over the last six months, so I was interested to see how they did on their first (to my knowledge) appearance in Manchester.

First, of course, we had to get through the support acts. First on the list were Apartment 26, who were OK, but nothing special. Second were Finger Eleven, who were much better. I haven’t yet worked out if they were serious or taking the piss though – the guitarist has definitely taken on the excesses of guitar-godism, although at least he provided some comedy moments while attempting to apparently kill himself with his own guitar strap.

Evanescence themselves though were bloody good. They appeared to have managed to fit an entire arena-level stage set into the Apollo – god only knows how. It was impressive. The sound quality was exceptional – with some very impressive bass lines that still rattled joints at the back of the venue. I think they played pretty much the entire album, as well as a couple of tracks I hadn’t heard before.

Some wanker was braying about how when he saw them somewhere else they’d got twice the people on stage, proper string section blah blah frigging blah, and yes OK, you could tell that the strings etc. were sampled on this occasion. But to my mind it was still a good concert – and it’s pointless comparing seeing them on a huge stage in front of 50,000+ people to a small 3,000-4,000ish venue like the Apollo. Vagaries like stage size and so on also play a part.

For myself, I’d go and see them again happily – but only once they’ve released another album, and built up some more material. All the same, well worth seeing, and thoroughly enjoyable.