Unfortunately due to terrible traffic in the Utrecht center (2,5 hours from Schiphol to Utrecht by car!) we arrived too late to witness the opener. We saw 1,5 song before they had to leave the stage, what little of impression I got from Lucifer is reasonable positive, but it was too short to really pass fair judgement on the band.

 

After a short wait Paradise Lost kicked off with ´No Hope In Sight´ from their latest release. A song that is a good opener with the heavy driven riffs and the easily to chant lyrics. What only was too bad is that the vocals of Nick Holmes were not really good audible, because of the drums and guitars which were way more loud than the vocals. Luckily this mix became better during the performance, although at the end of the part before their encore the vocals again became more unclear, but this was not only because of the sound mix.

 

As follow up to this new song, the guys treat the public on two golden oldies in ´Widow´ and ´Gothic´, especially the second one was greeted with a warm welcome by the public. The newer songs were also shown enough love and respect by the respect, but it were the more older songs that got the best reception. For me ´Enchantment´ was therefore also one of the high notes of the concert. Next to being just one heck of a song, also the crowd was really involved which made it even more enjoyable.

 

´Requiem´ closed the “regular”part of the concert, what followed was an encore of four songs, where ‘Faith Divide Us – Death Unite Us’ was one of my personal favorites of the evening. With ‘Say Just Words’ Paradise Lost closed the concert and what was left was an entertained crowd who saw a more than decent performance.

 

The gig was highly enjoyable, but won’t be memorized as one of the best performance I saw in 2015. Therefore it missed some power. Aaron Eady was the only one showing some emotion during their performance, where the rest was very professional but not really striving to get the public to their edge. Next to that, while I understand the choice, I missed more older songs. With 7 songs The Plague Within was really good represented, but as much as I enjoyed that album a more balanced overview of their discography would be better. I missed songs like ‘Embers Fire’ or ‘True Belief’ or many more of those songs that I grew up with. Despite these points of criticism it was a nice concert to witness and when they come again I would like to see them again,with hopefully a little bit more interesting setlist.

 

Setlist:

1.       No Hope In Sight

2.       Widow

3.       Gothic

4.       Terminal

5.       Erased

6.       Praised Lamented Shade

7.       Victim Of The Past

8.       Enchantment

9.       Flesh From Bone

10.     Beneath Broken Earth

11.     As I Die

12.     Requiem

 

Encore:

1.       Return To The Sun

2.       Faith Divide Us – Death Unite Use

3.       An Eternity Of Lies

4.       Say Just Words