I have never seen Opeth & I have never seen Nevermore.  Needless to say, I was pretty damned excited for this show!!

Lawrence, KS is about a 6 hour drive, but this line-up made the decsion to go a no brainer...

We drive our 6 hours... check in the hotel... get to the club... stand in line... and then find out that Nevermore is not joining the tour until 10/27...  WTF!!!

At this point, I'm trying to stay optimistic.  "Pelican" has now taken "Nevermore's" place on the bill & I've read some good reviews about them.  So, my mood lowers, but all in all I'm happy to be there...

"Fireball Ministry" opens the evening with some really dirty & doomy tunes topped by a very "Lemmy" like singing style.  All in all, they definitely were into their performance and I really enjoyed their show.

"Pelican" was up next.  An instrumental outfit, composing atmospheric tunage... I'm thinking this should be cool.  Well, I'm not sure if it was my "They are not Nevermore" mentallity or the fact that this band seemed as though they didn't want to be there... but either way, I did not enjoy it very much.  I'd love to hear their material from their CD in an atmosphere where I'm in the mood for what they do.  They introduced themselves in this fashion "We are Pelican, we will take up the next 40 minutes of your time, and then Opeth will play"...  They then proceeded to perform their 40 minutes without saying another word.  No thank you's during the applause... Nada?  Oh well..

OPETH!!!

Set List
---------

Baying of the Hounds
When
Bleak
In My Time of Need
The Grand Conjuration
The Moor
Deliverance
Blackwater Park
Demon of the Fall

This setlist if from memory, so it could be a little off

I will not do a song by song & since you either love or hate Opeth... I'll just say that their live performance was very impressive.  The atmoshpere that they create on their CDs was definitely reproduced in this live setting.  The musicianship was very tight, and with Martin (Bloodbath) temporarily filling in behind the kit, that was a pleasant surprise.  Some of the drumming details might have been lacking, but in general he did a fantastic job.

The vocals were as impressive as I hoped they would be.. Melodious and beautiful clean vocals intertwined with the demonic and brutal...

The highlight of the show for me was the song "Deliverance".  The final 3 minutes of that song are just incredible.  The drumming is particularly difficult in this passage and it was performed very well..

There is no goofing off with Opeth... they always mean business... BUT the most surprising aspect of the evening was how witty Mikael was.  He interacted with the audience with ease and was down right funny most of the time.

All in all..  well worth the 6 hour drive!!

Oh, and The Moor kicks ass, too.

Great review Bare.  Sounds like you had a great time in spite of missing out on Nevermore. 

\m/\m/

And your right...  I don't know if I could put a better setlist together myself...  Finishing off with "Demon of the Fall" was just awesome...

I personally very much enjoy the Damnation album... and was glad to see "In My Time of Need" made it to the set..

and this was the show where I saw the 50 year old guy (at least) wearing the Goatwhore shirt..

So, yes... I had a great time...  I'll just catch Nevermore the next time they pass by...

I did give the set list.. but just assumed people where aware of the song times...  Opeth played for 2 hours.