[Complete set of photos available on Flickr]
I’m writing this eight days after the gig as a result of a ridiculous workload, so apologies if it’s not as precise as other reviews. It’s certainly no reflection on the band themselves who were superb.
We managed to get there and find the lovely Wendi at around 8:30, so we missed the band (who we’d not heard of anyway). Parking near the Picture House is a bugger at the best of times if you don’t want to pay a fortune at the N round the back, but with Alice Cooper playing 200 yards away at the Playhouse, all the free spaces were pretty much gone by half six.
Shinedown are a great live band as I’m sure I ranted about back in February when they played the Academy. The Picture House is a smaller venue, I’m sure, but they treated it the same – they may as well have been at an arena.
With the new album, Amaryllis, having been out for a few months now, several songs from it made an appearance after a handful of them had been slipped in during the gig earlier in the year. This is a good thing as it’s a superb piece of work with not a bad track on it. They were as well-received as the older stuff (which included a couple of trips back to the first album).
Brent Smith is a superb front man who looms like a giant on stage. He managed to re-word the usual “you’re the best crowd we’ve ever played to” speech to make it a little less predictable and enjoyed a couple of speeches that would have made Bruce Dickinson proud. One of them has had my head ticking since the gig and will result in another blog post once I have the time. Mainly it was due to the fact that I’d had the squits for a day before the concert, and I was flying high on virtually no food for 24 hours and a need to clench my buttocks for 90 minutes so that I didn’t miss any of their set.
Despite a “strict curfew” of 10pm, the band managed to stay on stage until almost quarter past playing nothing but great song after great song. I don’t think there’s another band around right now with so many tracks which can make the hair stand up on your neck as soon as you hear the intro. It amazes me that they’re still playing venues of this size, but I’m revelling in it before they start ramping up the gig capacities and the ticket prices to go with it.
Long may they rock. And if you missed out on this tour, keep an eye out for the next one.
Related articles
- Shinedown: We’ve Already Recorded a New Album (loudwire.com)
