Geoff Tate with band playing Rage For Order and Empire in full. Two years ago I thought it a good plan to be there, so aftter several delays the tour was now actually happening. De Boerderij sold out, but as it was the last night of the 1G policy (where a test was obigatory) it seemed that some people did not want to make the effort. I was tested negative myself, but that was not as easy as it sounds. Having an appointment arriving a few minutes in advance I saw noone behind a closed door at Marktweg number 20. Asking some guys they told me that a test location was at number 163. A banner at a garage indicated same, but similar closed door. So I rang the number mentioned in my confirmation email the night before. Turned out they had decided to close, as today (23/3) there is no more testimg required. My questions on why I was not informed, where to go and what to do now met a bad luck reply. So going back home and looking online for a place that was open, I found one and 20 minutes all was sorted and done down throat and nose. So I could go to de Boerderij, where upon arrival the long queue moved reasonably fast. Entering the venue you could see why, noone was bothered to ask for my test result. This is fair as our bold minister in February told us that from now on measures would be enforced immediately after his talks. This time he opted for 8 days for reasons only known to him. Well I was in and found some changes at de Boerderij. Paying in cash is no longer an option. Even the garderobe is cashless and used this change to increase it's price (1.25). The bar did not accept my old Boerderij coins, but I could fill out a form at the entrance, so now we wait if they pay back the value of the coins. Next question if they use the old or new price, as de Boerderij now increased the price of a beer to 3 Euro. Well enough on de Boerderij, Nobel is better indeed nowadays. Meanwhile the venue was filling up, with the mix of Classic rock fans and people who still are rooted firmly in metal.
Tonight would have two opening acts, but I never heard of any of them. First band were German Sons of Sounds. If I never heard of them before, being fairly well introduced in the progmetal scene, we can assume that 98% of the audience did not know them either. Somehow they forgot to inform the clowns on their status as coming up high fiving the audience and asking for audience participation almost made them rockstars. Well the few who had their first gig in two years and wanted to like everything were a tiny minority and the audience just remained silent. This also because the songs were forgettable, the playing nothing special and the vocalist who looked like a young Bruce, unfortunately never came close to Bruce no matter his age. Why they got 40 minutes to bore us will always be a mystery.
Next band Darker Half only could be better. Well they were, but not that they fired up the hall. The playing was better and at times I heard nice instrumental parts. The vocalists started of with some Tate like screams and had a reasonable voice overall. The energy on stage was all over, with te bold guitarist jumping and stretching going through all of his exercise routines. So a decent band, but unfortunately upon first hearing no memorable songs.
At 21:30 two hours after the evening kicked off Geoff Tate came on stage. With Geoff Tate over the past decades you never know what you get. I saw him surprising me positively and negatively throughout teh years. When he played Operation Mindcrime in 013 some years ago it was a positive one, so why not repeat that with two other classic Ryche albums. When the band came on we got the first surprise. These guys looked like Slowakia's next participants of Eurovison. The Hamsik lookalike playing the rockstar all the time, while at the other end one guitarist was displaying a 70's porn moustache. The clothing was also over the top, so all in all these guys looked like a parody band and had nothing to do with Queensryche from the eighties. Well what matters is the playing they say. Here it was OK with three guitars dividing the double guitars of the originals. Only the playbacked backing vocals were annoyingly miss at times (Surgical Strike). And Geoff Tate himself? well he sounded fine, but how far he was helped with that we shall never know.
The evening was build around two albums and we started with Rage For Order. This was especially nice as it is a great album and several songs I hardly (if ever) heard them playing live. The album made it to number 3 in my ranking last year and I could hear why. Highlights all over and even Gonna Get Close To You sounded ok. The band never reached levels to the old Queensryche, but in a live setting these songs still spoke loudly. After the album and some 45-50 minutes further we got a break. Well that pissed of several early risers as it took far too long. When the band came back the reason was exposed, they changed outfits FFS. Now Empire is their million copy selling album, but I only ranked it at 7 last year. Now we got the full album played this was definitely not too low. There are too many fillers inbetween the great songs. Jet City Woman still starts great and turns horrible during the chorus. Della Brown got the hall looking for bar and toilets, while you hardly can call Hand on Heart or One and Only highlights in any set. On the other hand you get Best I Can, The Thin Line, Another Rainy Night and Empire all still sounding fine to me. Silent Lucidity got a very long introduction and made half the audience very happy, while I was waiting for Anybody Listening? One of the best Queensryche songs, they hardly played live. Well when it got this far, again the band did not make it metal to me ad the version was rather blunt,.so I went home.
So all in all a mixed bag of feelings this evening. While the performances never fully convinced and we were obviously being fooled it was nice to hear especially Rage For Order again. The tour in 1986 brought Queensryche to Arnhem supporting Bon Jovi and 36 years later the same songs still can stand proud. Geoff Tate himself still can be heard live on stage, but I decided I won't go see him playing old Queensryche again. The bands he brings never can reach the same level of the original band. If he decides to tour Sweet Oblivion and Operation:Mindcrime material I will give it another chance though. So all was not as bad as above words might make you think, but I was far from overwhelmed throughout the evening.
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