It had been quite a while since we last made the trip to the to us familiar Biebob club but tonight's bill was all the incentive we needed to once again make the 90 minute drive. American act Halycon Way was the first band of the night but their brand of progressive metal mixed with technical thrash didn't really fit with what the other combos on the bill had to offer. I had much rather seen another band as opener and I'm sure most of the people in attendance shared that opinion. Fortunately they were given only 30 minutes cause that was pretty much all I could stomach from Halycon Way.

Amanda Sommerville and her band Trillium were the main reason for our visit to Biebob and not surprisingly my expectations were running high. I needn't have worried however cause miss Sommerville and C° met them on all fronts. Opening cut “Machine Gun”, which also kicks off the newest CD and is one of the strongest songs on it, immediately hit the bull's eye. The fact that Amanda is asked by so many acts (including Kamelot, Edguy, Avantasia, Epica, Mob Rules and André Matos) to lay down vocal tracks is proof of her amazing talent and tonight she showed all of us punters just how powerful her tonsils are. This was my first encounter with her in a live situation and the more the gig progressed, the bigger the impression she made on me. Tracks like “Mistaken”, “Purge”, Into The Dissonance”, “Utter Descension” “Bow The Ego”, “Path Of Least Resistance” and the dramatic “Coward” were all brought with lots of conviction and passion. On the studio version of “Set A Fire” miss Sommerville shares the vocals with former Helloween throat Michael Kiske but tonight she handled every vocal line herself backed up by her band. And as it turned out mister Kiske was not missed for one second which underlines the fact that Amanda has what it takes to shine all on her own.

Main act tonight was Delain and this was the fifth time that I witnessed a gig by this Dutch foursome. The current tour is in support of the not yet released “We Are The Others” album so all of the new tunes (except for “Get The Devil Out Of Me”) aired tonight were unknown to this here RR scribbler.
They kicked things off with the brand new “Mother Machine” and it took some time for me to get into the groove of things. Charlotte fortunately was wearing a stunning outfit which made up for the fact that we were treading unknown waters here. Things got in the right gear once “Stay Forever” was played as this was the real start of a beautiful set of no less than 19 songs including as mentioned earlier quite a few newly penned ones. One of the most striking new cuts was “Electricity”.
Older tracks such as “April Rain”, “See Me In Shadow”, “ Shattered” and “Go Away were served up with the right amount of energy, the guys in the band played tight and Charlotte was clearly having a great time on stage. And judging by the looks on their faces the not so numerous crowd was also enjoying this performance. Delain finished off their set with the beautiful “Control The Storm” and the powerful “The Gathering”.