Queensrÿche Captivate the Crowd with a Spine-tingling Musical Masterpiece at Electric Brixton!

Queensrÿche Captivate the Crowd with a Spine-tingling Musical Masterpiece at Electric Brixton!

Queensrÿche are a band who have built a massive following of devoted fans over their illustrious 43 year career and tonight’s breathtaking performance at the packed Electric Brixton showed that many years may have passed but they are a band who clearly haven’t lost their edge! They are tighter, hotter and better than they’ve ever been before! When Todd La Torre took over the coveted role of frontman from the much loved Geoff Tate, there was much controversy about whether he could fill such big shoes, but La Torre is a man born to front this incredible band, a true rock god in every sense!

Now, it would be easy to make this review all about this charismatic frontman, but it’s impossible to forget that La Torre has a stella band of rock legends by his side, a band that are tighter than tight and clearly love to play together. They rocked the stage like a carefully orchestrated dance, each track a work of art that left the audience breathless and screaming for more!! With Casey Grillo on drums, Michael Wilton on lead guitar, Eddie Jackson on bass and backing vocals and Mike Stone on rhythm guitar and backing vocals, they were the ultimate dream team in every sense!

With support from Californian ‘old school’ heavy metal band Night Demon who were a massive hit with the heavy metal loving crowd! With their Flying V guitars, headbanging furiously, looking every inch the heavy metal heroes, they wouldn’t have looked out of place on the cover of a 1985 Metal Hammer magazine! Their music was solid metal through and through and it was impossible not love them! Proper kick-arse die-hard metalers all the way! Their music was top notch, especially the brilliant, ‘The Chalice’ where a cloaked grim-reaper demonic character with glowing eyes and a sinister black chalice in hand skulked across the stage as the band urged the audience to drink from the chalice of everlasting life!

The setlist for the night was clearly carefully thought out, and began with the band playing their absolutely stunning 1984 Queensrÿche EP in it’s entirety. The opening track ‘Queen of the Reich’ created a frenzy of excitement in the auditorium. Opening with La Torre’s unmistakable spellbinding vocals and Wiltons intricate guitar solo winding up to its crescendo, the prog metal kings were on fire! ‘The Lady Wore Black’ (the B side to ‘Queen of the Reich) with its haunting whistling intro reminiscent of ‘Sister Mary’ made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as pure emotion bled from every note.  As the track came to an end, the stage faded to black and the band briefly left the stage, before returning to play the complete ‘The Warning’ album much to the thrill of their devoted fans. The nostalgia drenched set was bursting with stand-out tracks, three of which were undeniably the exquisite and nostalgic ‘Deliverance’ and the momentous ‘Before the Storm’.

As if their besotted fans weren’t thrilled enough, the party wasn’t over as the encore comprised of three magnificent tracks taken from the three albums which followed ‘The Warning’,  ‘Walk in the Shadows’ from the 1986 album, Rage for Order’, ‘Empire’ from the 1990 album of the same name and the utterly glorious, ‘Eyes of a Stranger’.

Whilst the entire night was pure perfection in every sense, the best track of the night was undoubtedly the superb final song ‘Eyes of a Stranger’ where pretty much the entire audience sang along at the top of their voices, arms out stretched, a beautiful shared moment between an incredible band and their devoted and much-loved fans! To sum it up, Queensrÿche are one of those bands who have to be seen to be believed, true showmen in every sense with a back catalogue that has truly stood the test of time, utterly unique with a sound that is theirs and theirs alone! There is only one and their will only ever be one Queensrÿche!

Setlist:

Queensrÿche EP:

Queen of the Reich
Nightrider
Blinded
The Lady Wore Black

The Warning:
Warning
En Force
Deliverance
No Sanctuaryempire
NM 156
Take Hold of the Flame
Before the Storm
Child of Fire
Roads to Madness

Encore:
Walk in the Shadows
Empire
Eyes of a Stranger

Photos of Queensrÿche

Photos of Night Demon

 

Review and photos by Louise Phillips

All photos are owned by Louise Phillips Music Photography and cannot be shared without consent.

http://www.queensrycheofficial.com/