Nightwish, Arch Enemy and Amorphis live at The SSE Arena Wembley on December 19th, 2015

Words by: Robert Sutton

Images by: Robert Sutton Photography (Facebook)

Nightwish performed their last night of their European ‘Endless Forms Most Beautiful’ tour, and only UK date, to a sold out show at The SSE Arena Wembley on the 19th December. They are the first ever Finnish band to headline at this iconic arena and the event featured the bands full stage show production.

Support for the night was from Amorphis and Arch Enemy.

Amorphis are a six piece Finish death metal band (who also plays heavy metal, progressive and folk metal songs). They have just released their twelfth studio album ‘Under the Red Cloud’ and embraced this opportunity to spread the word about themselves and their new album to this full to capacity Wembley audience. By the time that their short opening set was completed I am sure that they did have a few more fans in the audience.

Amorphis

http://www.amorphis.net

Arch Enemy, The Swedish melodic death metal band replaced their singer in 2014 , with Canadian Alissa White-Gluz and this was the first time that I had seen the band with their new singer and to see whether she was up to the challenge of filling her predecessors shoes..I have to say she was more than up to the job and gave an absolutely blinding performance, with her death metal growls and head banging blue hair, she owned the stage and the audience really appreciated not only her but also the rest of the bands performance. From this performance Nightwish would need to pull something special out of the bag for their performance.

Arch Enemy

http://www.archenemy.net

Nightwish is the most successful Finish band worldwide and were promoting their new album ‘Endless Forms Most Beautiful, their first album to feature Floor Jansen on vocals who joined the band full time in 2013 as a replacement for Anette Olzon.

They opened the evening’s performance with ‘Shudder before the Beautiful’ from their new album and opened it with a super four section back screen and a full set of pyrotechnics, not only at the front of the stage but also at the back and from the lighting rig gantry. It was clear from the start that, yes, this was going to be something special and boy we were not to be disappointed throughout the whole evening’s performance.

The band then went on to play ‘Yours Is an Empty Hope’ also from the new album and also with lots of pyro, before then going back to their eighth single release from 2002, ‘Ever Dream’.

About two-thirds of the way through their performance they played one of the fans favorite tracks ‘Nemo’ from their 2004 album ‘Once’ and then another crowd pleaser ‘I want my tears back’ from the ‘Imaginaerum’ album.

They played a strong seventeen song setlist and the vocals from Floor throughout the range and all evening long were absolutely superb, with her giving a performance that just about any other singer in the world should be envious of.

Special guest narration was performed by Professor Richard Dawkins and he finished the night off with the narration at the end of ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’.

To sum up the evening’s performance from Nightwish, I think I would have to say fantastic vocals, with a great stage production comprising of pyrotechnics, pyrotechnics and more pyrotechnics…and with credit to both the support bands as well, who did a super job and gave us all a great night of entertainment to remember.

Nightwish

www.nightwish.com