Epica (NL)
On December 7th Epica passed by Hollywood to performed the “Design of Universe” tour concert at the Key Club. It was nice to arrive there and see the venue almost full (after all it was a Tuesday night and gigs in the LA area are not always crowded).
All opening bands had already played when I arrived (Sorry, no review for the opening bands this time).
Everybody was waiting anxiously for Epica when the first notes of “Samadhi” were heard. The musicians entered the stage one by one (the lead singer Simone Simons was the last - of course). The public went crazy when the band started to play the first songs: “Resign to Surrender” and “Sensorium”.
It is hard to fairly review the concert from the beginning because during the first songs it was difficult to pay attention at anybody else than Simone. She “stole the scene” wearing her gorgeous short black and white dress, banging her head and of course… signing beautifully. She was amazing!
The band continued with “Mother of Light”, “Quietus”, “Unleashed” and “Martyr of the Free World”. All musicians did a really good show: they interacted a lot with the public, spun their heads like crazy and played perfectly.
In “Mother of Light” Simone and the guitar player Mark Jansen sang a duet facing each other. It was really cool.
During entire evening we saw some amazing guitar performances from both Mark Jansen and Isaac Delahaye. Another highlight was the double pedals of the drummer Ariën van Weesenbeek during “Unleashed”: he was just unbelievable!
The band carried on with “Cry for the Moon”. Everybody sang it with Simone. It was one of the best moments of the evening. The bass guitar player Yves Huts did a good job and the drummer finished the song with a nice “mini-solo”.
I was impressed with Mark’s vocals (at one point I whished that he would take over the vocals for rest of the song. Yes… it was THAT good).
A little “break” came and the band played the “Imperial March” (John Williams cover). It was fun! Then, the evening continued with the calm “Tide of Time” followed by “Blank Infinity”, “The Obsessive Devotion” and “Kindgdom of Heaven”. The keyboard player Cohen Jassen did a great performance.
The band left and came back for the encore with “Sancta Terra”, “The Last Crusade” and “Consign to Oblivion”: Perfect way to finish this awesome evening. The crowd was wild. It was hard to come back to reality and say good-bye to the musicians.
Overall: Great performance, great concert. The musicians were amazing! Everybody seamed to be having a great time! It was totally worth it and I would definitely recommend it to most metal lovers.
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