Within Temptation in Concert

One of the many things I wanted to do on my wishlist was to see Within Temptation in concert. Last weekend on the 10th of November this became a reality. I would say that Within Temptation were in my top 5 favourite bands of all time for sure. I own all their albums and enjoy them all. I have a real soft spot for their early albums like Mother Earth and The Silent Force. Discovering their debut album and first EP, Enter and The Dance was one of my favourite discoveries.

I've said many times that Enter is one of my favourite albums from Within Temptation, but sometimes I feel like my opinions change but I've always hold Within Temptation's albums as a high regard. Mother Earth is the album I play when I'm working out at the gym.

I love how Within Temptation’s various change of styles throughout the whole discography. I discovered Within Temptation through YouTube. The first song I heard was "Angels" and I became hooked ever since. I later got into "Stand My Ground" and got the whole album for Christmas that year.

Another stand out track for me was "Memories". It’s a beautiful ballad which remains a fan-favourite and a personal favourite of mine. The concert I went to was a sold-out venue and the queue was phenomenal. It went all the way around the arena to the back and nearly on the road. I was lucky to get a place at the front.

The opening act was a band called Ego Kill Talent. I thought they were quite cool, even though I overheard a lot of people say that they weren’t too keen on them. I would have liked to have seen another support band as well. Sometimes they normally have two support bands. Seeing the main band is good, but I also like discovering new bands as well which is one of the reasons I enjoyed Last.FM in it's prime.

I'm really happy with where I was at the front. I got a really good view, even with everyone filming on their phone. I took some pictures and filmed Stand My Ground for my friend, Parry. I got a good view at the front and I got on really well with some of the people around me. It felt really nice and sociable.

Within Temptation came on just after 9 PM. There was an insatiable vibe in the arena when the band arrived and the energy that radiated from Sharon’s voice is beautiful. I think her vocals sound so much better live now then they did in the "Black Symphony" performance. It made me realise how fantastic Sharon's voice range is. Her performance of The Promise was amazing and one of my favourites because the vocals at the start gave me the chills: sounded a lot better than it did on the album.

They played a lot of songs from their new album and I’m impressed with them. I love the new direction that Within Temptation are taking and appreciate the fact that they always change their sound and pull it off so well. Even if their genre changes, the energy and talent are still there.

I was so happy with the setlist. It had songs from the new album mostly, and also a lot of tracks from The Unforgiving, The Heart of Everything and a few tracks from Mother Earth. There was so much love in the arena. It really overwhelmed me, and there were tears. Tears of happiness that is.

I think some people were disappointed that they didn’t perform Memories or Angels, but I think the fantastic performances of The other tracks will make up for it. There were 17 songs on the setlist, and they've got a lot of iconic songs so it would have been hard to narrow it all down. The concert felt so quick and when the encore was finished, I didn’t want to go home, I wanted to go relive the concert experience again.

A lot of people were expecting two songs for the encore, even though they only played the song "Stairways To The Skies" in the encore. I thought the encore was perfect. Even though it was just one song, it really made a big impact. The staging and lighting were wonderful and I thought to bring Sharon up to the sky was a nice touch that played on fan's views that she's an angel.

They were selling Sharon Den Adel's solo project, My Indigo at the merchandise store: in vinyl and cassette. I didn't get it this time as the crowd was too intense and busy, but they had some cool tops on there. I think it would have been really cool if they had more Within Temptation records for sale like in the Nightwish and Babymetal concerts in Wembley they had some of their old records for sale.

The concert made me love Within Temptation even more and I would like to see them again the next time they are touring in the UK. As you can see in the pros and cons, a lot of the cons have nothing to do with the band and the music itself but external factors that are out of the band's control. I think O2 did a good job in managing it.

Pros: Exceptional vocals and music, stage & lighting, presence, and atmosphere. Cons: Long ques, merchandise didn't appeal to me much, distance from the city centre.