I went to see Ev on Thursday night. Here is my review.
SETLIST
Haunted
Going Under
Taking Over Me
Everybody's Fool
My Last Breath
Farther Away
Even In Death
Zero
Bring Me To Life
Tourniquet
Imaginary
*ENCORE*
My Immortal
Whisper
I got to the Rave at about 3:45 and just meandered around a bit. I didn't see any familiar faces or which bus was which (there were a total of 4 different busses around) so I just kind of chilled out and sat down for a while.
After continuing to meander a bit they began to let people in the bar area of the Rave around 4:45, but I decided that I didn't feel like going in the Bar yet because I wanted to wait around to see if I could catch anyone I knew or Ev, so I sat down out by the front of the Rave.
Around 6 I decided to go in and by that time they began letting people into the lower level of the Rave which was all of the Nintendo Fusion stuff. I tried a game and decided their controller was WAY too big and goofilly constructed for me to continue to use them. So I went to get in the line to go upstairs to the Rave Ballroom. They began letting us upstairs at 6:45 and after climbing three flights of stairs I saw that most of the spots up front were taken, so I decided to grab a front row place all the way to the right by the speaker towers. Then the wait began.
Even though the show was not scheduled to start until 8 they decided that Finger Eleven was going to go on at 7:30 exactly. That didn't bother me any. Their set was decent, and they were done by 8. Then the Nintendo Fusion guy comes out and yells about this and that and tells us to get hype and to go sign up to win a Gameboy Advance signed by Ev, and I look around and see by this time I am pretty much encased in people so there goes that idea.
Revis hit the stage at 8:25 and they were AS ADVERTISED. They kick ass live. They had the crowd rocking and movin' by that point. The only bad part about their set was the fact that they had a GIANTLY bright light shining right on the crowd the entire time which made it next to impossible to see THEM without shading your eyes lol. Revis finished up at 8:50. Nintendo Guy again, blah blah blah .........
COLD hit the stage at 9:10. I was impressed with the ability of the stage crew to change sets and do soundcheck in 20 minutes. COLD was good, I am not a big COLD fan but they didn't disappoint. The crowd really seemed to be feeling them and knew their songs. Had I known more of the songs I probably would have enjoyed it more too. COLD was done about 9:50. Then the real wait began. Out comes Fusion guy again. He gave away the last Gameboy Advance signed by Ev and threw out a bunch of T-Shirts.
Then we wait. They were pumping pretty good music the entire evening, so it wasn't that bad but still. Guitar check. Drum check. Drums again. Nothing for about 15 minutes. Guitar check. FINALLY Keyboard check. Wait for another 5 minutes, the lights go down, the intro music starts and the place goes nuts. Here comes Evanescence at 10:35.
They go right into "Haunted", I noticed that it seems like the tuning on the guitars has gotten more aggressive, it sounded really ANGRY, really cool. Much different from the Summerfest show and first Rave show.
Same thing with "Going Under". Amy was definitely on her game tonight vocally.
Boom, boom, boom, go through "Taking Over Me", "Everybody's Fool", and "My Last Breath". "Farther Away" was good, "Even In Death" was an awesome too.
Now we move into the headbanging portion of the show with "Zero", "Bring Me To Life" and "Tourniquet" back to back. The crowd is feelin' "Zero", singing along and all. It took them a minute to pick up on the opening guitar riffs to "Bring Me To Life" and I audibily yelled "Come on now you know THIS!", but everyone was into it once they got it. The thrashing around continued into "Tourniquet" and pretty much didn't end until the break between that and "Imaginary". Once they finshed "Imaginary" they cut the house lights and we were left to cheer and wait.
The crowd wasn't as loud as it could have been, but they tried to make up for it by stomping on the wooden floor and rockin' the place that way. After two minutes or so Amy comes back out and hits the keyboard with "My Immortal". Let me tell you the way the band pulled this one off tonight blew the Summerfest performance of it out of the water. The notes were sharp and beautiful and Amy killed it with the vocals. The guitar/drum help for the last part sounded like pure genius, simply awesome.
Lastly, everyone got the rest of their thrashing and aggression out by moving around to "Whisper", once they finished that up the guitar picks and drumsticks got thrown out to the crowd and the house lights came back on and it was over.
Now for my commentary, this is the best of the three Ev shows I have seen. They keep getting BETTER and BETTER. The sounds they evoke from the guitars and the solos and the drumming are just over the top awesome. Maybe it was just because I was so close to the speakers but the way the instruments sounded was pretty cool to me and seemed different than the other shows. Like I said above "My Immortal" was just WOW. There are no other words to describe that, unbelievable and awesome maybe.
I only stayed after for about a half hour to see if anyone would come out of the busses then I left. I was just happy seeing the show and that, but maybe some of the other people who went have stories, since I didn't get to meet up with any of the other EvBoarders that were there
. One positive I take from this though, becuase I was on the side, I didn't get caught in the mosh pit this time
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