I have been waiting for this night for a very long time. I first listened to Amaranthe when a friend of mine told me to go and put on The Nexus album way back in 2013 and after 11 years and 5 albums later, they have finally come to Australia!
Amaranthe may have arrived in Melbourne on a miserable cold, windy and no sun kind of day, but that doesn’t deter any fans from showing up early to get in line and wait for a night of singing some incredibly catchy songs and I’m sure there are plenty of people who have been waiting as long as I have for this night to come about. You can’t get a warmer welcome than adoring Aussie fans, right?
Once inside Northcote Theatre, I move straight to the usual spot, right in front of the mixing desk, it’s usually where I find the best mix, where I start to look around and see a line forming at the side of the venue, then suddenly it cuts across the dance floor, mosh pit, middle of the room area and wonder what the hell this is about, then realise, that’s the freaking merch line! I don’t think I’ve seen the line come out like that before in this venue, mind you, I have only been here 3 times before now and this is Amaranthe’s first Australian tour, so, I guess that is fair, but still a welcome surprise.
With a sudden jump start of drum and bass intro music, right smack bang on the 8pm start time, most of the crowd jumped in shock as The Last Martyr walked out on stage. Melbourne local, female fronted metalcore with drum and bass/electro backings, The Last Martyr were a great choice for opening up the night, bringing their A game with plenty of movement, crowd involvement and a tightly played set, although it did take me a song to realise they did actually have a live drummer playing, I could hear an incredibly well mixed drum sound and thought that it must have been part of the electro backing tracks but then, neatly packed away to the side of the stage, there they were sitting, absolutely killing it. The Last Martyr weren’t here to muck around though, they were smashing out songs consistently, with minimal stage banter, even throwing in a great cover of Bombfunk MC’s Freestyler and having a guest vocalist appear from nowhere to add an extra element to one of their tracks. I think the guest vocalist completely smashed it and played his part in their set quite well. (Guest vocalist may or may not have been a certain STM review writer’s younger brother, definitely not a biased opinion).
The lights go down, and a spoken word intro comes on speaking of control, freeing your mind, AI, the general themes these days within the world and most of Amaranthe’s tracks. The opening notes to Fearless are played and the crowd instantly goes nuts. Unfortunately for Australia, Mikael Sehlin, their heavy vocalist had to step off the tour due to personal reasons but Samy Elbanna, who has filled in the part on previous tours is here with them tonight, who holds his own quite well. Elize Ryd was hard to hear to start with during the set but then I also noticed a fair amount of delay being added to her vocals, which then muddied her up a little. Nils Molin sounded absolutely incredible, that guy can sing! Amaranthe smashed out 19 songs in their 90-minute set tonight! That’s some hard work, and quite a selection in songs from their back catalogue. They cover something off all their albums, picking the singles of the era’s.
Finally seeing and hearing these songs played live was an incredible feeling and the band were so energetic. Constantly moving around the stage, jumping up on stage boxes, noticing that they do have a great system in place where whoever is singing has the main center stage, so there is constant movement and each singer gets the limelight, that’s what you call teamwork. Coming into Boomerang, Elize and Nils were standing on opposite sides of the stage tossing a literal boomerang to each other in their sections. Elize took the laydown, couch singer style approach for Crystalline, Nils and Elize do a great back and forth on stage with Strong, which Amaranthe had a guest female vocalist do the recording, but I did enjoy the male counterpart in that song as well.
Amaranthe come back out to an encore of Archangel, That Song and ending on Drop Dead Cynical, with a track like That Song being in there, the crowd completely took over with the drum beat and clapping along, to which the band then dropped in some lyrics to We Will Rock You, they definitely gave the crowd their monies worth in involvement and entertainment. With songs like these where they are pop metal, written with catchy lyrics and melodies so that they will get stuck in your head for days on end, the crowd did their part for the night and were walking out with minimal voices after singing and screaming along all night, me included.
Judging by the grins on Amaranthe’s faces by the end of the set, I would say that it was a successful and long overdue first tour of Australia. I would suggest they already have plans of keeping Australia amongst their touring locations. I would definitely go again.
