Worlds collided with spectacular consequences last night in London as rock legends Evanescence and Within Temptation brought their highly-anticipated and long-awaited Worlds Collide Tour to the city’s O2 arena, and while it may have taken a couple of years longer to happen than originally planned due to several COVID-induced delays, the show that spectators were treated to within the walls of the UK capital’s Millennium Dome on the night of Monday November 14th, 2022, was most definitely worth the wait, because, oh boy, what an absolutely epic evening of immeasurable musical magnificence it was!
The evening got off to a memorable start around about seven o’clock with a very strong support set by American rock act Veridia, during which those in attendance were given a very welcome and extremely well-received preview of iconic Evanescence frontwoman Amy Lee’s incomparable musical and vocal skills when she came out to provide her piano talent to Veridia during their performance of “I’ll Never Be Ready”, sending the arena into a frenzy of excitement.
About half an hour after Veridia finished warming up the crowd, Within Temptation walked out onto the stage to thunderous applause and dived into an absolutely electrifying hour and a half or so set list that saw the superb Dutch metal ensemble sail exceedingly skilfully through tremendously tuneful, irresistibly riveting and completely impeccable performances of “Our Solemn Hour”, “Faster”, “Paradise (What About Us?)”, “Stand My Ground”, “Angels”, “The Purge”, “Raise Your Banner”, “Entertain You”, “Supernova”, “The Reckoning”, “Don’t Pray for Me”, “All I Need”, “Ice Queen”, “What Have You Done” and “Mother Earth”, all of which were met with justifiably ecstatic reactions by the thousands of fans filling up the venue and resulted in a massively impactful and utterly superlative set that surely left a lasting impression in the minds of everyone who bore witness to it.
Following another half an hour or so break after Within Temptation were done wowing the audience, the moment for which I’d been waiting for not just the almost three years since I acquired tickets for this show but also for a substantial percentage of my life to date arrived. Despite being a devoted Evanescence enthusiast for close to two full decades now, and Amy Lee being my all-time favourite vocalist by one hell of a long distance for the same amount of time, much to my extreme dismay I never had the opportunity to witness the band perform in person before the night of Monday November 14th, 2022, so to say that my anticipation for last night’s show was through the roof would be a ginormous understatement, and to say that Evanescence most definitely did not disappoint me at last night’s gig would be an understatement as vast as the universe itself, because right from the moment the utterly stellar quintet strolled out onto the stage to a deafening chorus of exceptionally vigorous clapping and cheers in the wake of a delightfully atmospheric and terrific anticipation-building intro tune in the form of “Artifact/The Turn” somewhere in the 9.30-9.45 pm time bracket and broke into a breathtakingly brilliant rendition of “Broken Pieces Shine”, I was completely spellbound by the sheer sublimity of what I saw and heard for the ensuing hour and a half.
When they were finished wowing with their utterly stupendous performance of “Broken Pieces Shine”, Amy along with fellow band members Tim McCord, Troy McLawhorn, Will Hunt and Emma Anzai dived right into a mesmerising version of “Made of Stone”, ahead of an equally engrossing rendition of “Take Cover”, before inducing goosebumps – for me, at least – with a colossally invigorating performance of Fallen classic “Going Under”, which is a song that will always occupy a very special place in my heart due to the fact that it was my first hearing of this utterly terrific tune that got me into Evanescence in the first place, all the way back when Fallen was still a fresh release. A few very elated minutes later, “Going Under” gave way to a truly stunning rendition of “Wasted On You”, after which Evanescence gifted their gathered fans an electrifying medley of “Lose Control”, “Part of Me” and “Never Go Back”. This was succeeded by a strikingly beautiful and tremendously affecting performance of “Far from Heaven”, which preceded the highlight of the evening’s Ev setlist for me – a dazzlingly elegant, grippingly gorgeous and enormously exhilarating rendition of my personal favourite Evanescence song, “Your Star”.
Once the amazingness that is “Your Star” reached its conclusion, the outstanding fivesome showcased a jaw-droppingly powerful and tear-inducingly excellent mash-up of the Synthesis and self-titled record renditions of “End of the Dream”, which was absolutely phenomenal to experience and came ahead of hugely thrilling, massively impactful and immensely moving versions of “Better Without You”, “Call Me When You’re Sober”, “Imaginary” and “Use My Voice”, before the latter of which Amy gave a wonderfully inspirational and uplifting speech about the power and importance of using your voice, standing up for what you believe and perseverance. An exceedingly invigorating version of “Blind Belief” then led the set extremely tunefully to an astonishingly beautiful and tremendously touching rendition of beloved and brilliant piano ballad “My Immortal”, after which the evening’s awesomeness wrapped up with an enormously rousing, splendidly spirited and utter joy-inducing performance of renowned Evanescence classic “Bring Me to Life”.
Wow. Just WOW. Wow, wow, wow, wow! WOW!!! That’s probably the best way I can sum up what I experienced in The O2 last night, because despite rambling on about how great it was for the last six paragraphs, I haven’t even begun to adequately convey the absolute amazingness of the London Worlds Collide show, and I cannot properly do so in words, no matter how many I use. As mentioned above, Amy Lee is my all-time favourite vocalist and has been for the better part of two decades, which is a very large chunk of the years I’ve existed, and her absolutely unparalleled and incomparably beautiful singing voice never fails to completely captivate and deeply affect me every time I hear it, not to mention the effect that her always fantastically deep, meaningful, moving and poetic lyrics and invariably sublime instrumental work have on me, all of which is why she is also a hero to me. However, as stunning as Amy’s vocal and musical skills are on records and in videos, experiencing her truly extraordinary talent in person is a whole other level of astonishingness, emotion and exultation that genuinely defies description. I was, and am still, floored by how indescribably superlative her performance was on the night of Monday November 14th, 2022. It was everything I hoped it would be and oh so, so, SO much more. And vocal/musical talents aside, as a showwoman Amy is quite simply sensational. Throughout the eighteen tunes that she, Tim, Troy, Will and Emma performed last night, Amy engaged in wonderfully warm and smile-inducingly amiable interactions with the audience, offered words of inspiration, optimism and encouragement, and generally just demonstrated that she is an incredibly charismatic, adept and natural performer who was most definitely born to do what she does and enhance the lives of countless individuals across the globe. Which isn’t to say that all of the other performers who were responsible for bringing last night’s show to life (no Evanescence pun intended!) weren’t also amazing throughout their performances, because they absolutely were. I’m just obviously biased when it comes to Amy Lee because she’s been at the top of my list of favourite musicians for so long, but the instrumental work by Tim, Troy, Will and Emma was indescribably stunning, utterly superlative and completely irreproachable for the duration of Evanescence’s set, as was the vocal work by Sharon den Adel throughout Within Temptation’s set and the instrumental work by the rest of the band, and Veridia were also excellent before that. All in all, the London date of the Worlds Collide Tour was four hours of absolutely epic music by three truly outstanding bands, any of which I would love to see live again, particularly Evanescence, who I want to see live again right now! Mind = blown. If you have the chance to see any of these acts live yourself, do not hesitate to seize the opportunity, because I would be absolutely shocked if you regretted it! And to those who will be attending upcoming Worlds Collide shows, you’re in for one hell of a treat! 10/10 isn’t nearly a high enough rating. Just superb.
