PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Tonight’s gig opened with Dutch band Stream of Passion, who are supporting Anneke van Giersbergen on this Gentle Storm tour, and two of the members also perform on stage as Anneke’s band.
Stream of Passion are a band I’ve seen several times and they always impress. Singer Marcela Bovio has a superb and very versatile voice, while the band are not only highly proficient musicians, but also put in very energetic performances, headbanging like crazy and leaping into the air.
Tonights set includes songs from their latest album and also from earlier albums as well as a cover version that regularly appears in their sets – their beautiful cover of the Radiohead song “Street spirit”.
As well as singing, Marcela also plays violin on one song – her Red Flying V violin has to be one of the coolest looking violins around, and she plays it beautifully.
It’s a great set, and judging by the number of people here tonight wearing Stream of Passion T-shirts they had a lot of fans in the crowd, and certainly the cheers and applause the band receive supports that. An excellent set from a band that deserves to be headlining venues of this size.
Stream of Passion setlist:
Monster
A war of our own
The curse
Deceiver
Street spirit
In the end
Haunted
Next was The Gentle Storm. Fronted by Anneke van Giersbergen, she has a very talented band with her including Stream of Passion singer Marcela Bovio on backing vocals, Stream of Passing bassist Johan van Stratum and Delain/MaYaN guitarist Merel Bechtold
The album is one of my favourite releases of the year so far, and with each song appearing twice, once as a Storm (Metal) version and once as a Gentle (Folk) version then I was curious to see how they’d do the live shows. The answer from the start was clear – most of the set is made up of Storm versions of the songs, and they sounded fantastic. Anneke is a great singer and with Marcela adding backing vocals things really did sound impressive, and with this talented band then the music was just as impressive.
Partway through the set, the band left the stage and Anneke picked up an acoustic guitar for a beautiful version of the Pink Floyd song, “Wish you were here” which she got the crowd to join in singing on. Over the course of the next few songs the rest of the band gradually returned to the stage and joined in till they were back to a full band for “Cape of Storms”
As well as getting plenty of songs from The Gentle Storm’s album, we also get a selection of covers from The Gathering, Ayreon, Pink Floyd, and Devin Townsend Project. While the Pink Floyd one was a surprise, Anneke has worked with Ayreon and Devin Townsend, so those were far less of a surprise, and of course she was with The Gathering for quite a long time.
It’s a superb set and one that had all the fans leaving happy.
Setlist:
Endless Sea
Heart of Amsterdam
Brightest Light
The Storm
Eléanor
New Horizons
Wish You Were Here
The Moment
Valley of the Queens
Comatose
Cape of Storms
The Greatest Love
Waking Dreams
Strange Machines
Isis and Osiris
Encore:
Fallout
Shores of India
