On Wednesday, Jan. 18, rock band Evanescence shook House of Blues with its highly anticipated performance.
The band, which had been on hiatus for a couple years, recently released its long-awaited, self-titled third album. Evanescence topped the Billboard 200, and as of December 2011, has sold 284,000 copies in the U.S. alone. Before the show began, the line outside House of Blues looped around the back of the venue. As someone who arrived at about 5:30 p.m. and payed the extra $15 to “Pass the Line” (a program which gives one priority entrance in exchange for making a purchase at the venue’s restaurant or store), I still only got within four to six rows of the stage throughout the whole night. Once the doors opened at 7 p.m., the concert hall was filled to capacity.
The show began at 8 p.m., with two opening sets by the bands Electric Touch and Rival Sons, respectively. While both groups did a decent enough job in exciting the crowd, by about 9:45 p.m., people were starting to get antsy waiting for Evanescence to get on stage.
Finally, after two hours, lead singer Amy Lee and the rest of the group came out and began the show with the first single off the new album, “What You Want.”
It was the perfect song to start off the rest of the night because people were able to let out all that pent up energy and anticipation on what is arguably one of the most up-tempo songs on the album.
Of its 19-song set list, the majority of the songs played were off of Evanescence, yet the band also played fan favorites and big hits off of Fallen and The Open Door.
While this may have been a conscious effort by the band to promote its newest album, fans played a part in making the set list. “Erase This,” for instance, was chosen earlier in the tour by Evanescence fans online as the song they wanted to see played. During the show, Lee commented that this is something that surprised her because she assumed that fans would have chosen a song off of the band’s first album, Fallen.
Some of the most enjoyable aspects of the show were when Lee’s piano was rolled onto the stage and she performed songs like “Lithium,” songs that were not only beautifully sung but that displayed her exquisite skills as a pianist.
Some of my personal favorites, such as “Going Under,” “My Heart is Broken,” “Lost in Paradise,” and one of their all-time biggest hits, “Bring Me To Life,” really took the crowd through different energies and emotions throughout the night.
By the time the show ended, with “My Immortal” as the final of the four encore songs, people left the venue feeling invigorated and truly satisfied. Evanescence had not been on tour in a while, so to see them really pull off an amazing show was a great sight.
The big disappointment for me was a mix of the amount of time it took for the band to get on stage, and the prevalence of music from the newer album over the older two. But, to be fair, these are personal nitpicks. For an hour and a half performance, it seemed to fly by, if by anything but the sheer intensity of the music and energy present.
Overall, it was a really good show and I cannot wait for them to come back to Orlando in the future.
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