Myself and Catt arrived at the gig slightly late, due to a detour for food before we got there. It meant that we missed the first band up, Venus Flytrap. I wasn't too worried about this, since I had been assured that I wouldn't be missing much and indeed from other reviews of the event the advice was good.
What we did walk into was The Faces of Sarah who were in their second song, Solitude. We had missed All that is Divine, which is a bit of a shame since it's one of my favourite tracks of theirs. They are such a good band, and there are also so many of them on the stage. Three with guitars, a drummer at the back, and Nick and Iside signing. They are gaining much more stage presence as they go along as well.
Misery Turns was a track that I was looking forward to seeing. Its recorded with Candia from the Inkies, and the once that I have seen it live she was signing, which meant that it had a massive amount of stage presence and energy in the female vocals. This time it seemed much less like a duet, more like it was just a track that the backing singer liked a bit more than the others. I'd like to see her singing at Nick, as opposed with him. But it did come off very well, and Candia is a lot to live up to. As usual the set ended with Hit me Baby. The crowd have come to expect it and it gets a good response.
Next up were Diorama. From the ticket they were supposed to be slightly further down the bill, but thats where they ended up. I was a little put off by the look of them. It looked like we were in for a very cyber set, what with the singer wearing a shiny silver shirt, and the keyboardist in a tight red top with red tinted goggles around his neck. But you know they weren't bad. Once they got going they had quite a biut of energy, though the singer did look like he wasn't too sure what to do with himself when he wasn't singing early in the set. I was feeling a little the worse for wear during this set, so I can't really give a fair review of it.
I found out that the singer in Diorama used to be a backing singer for Diary of Dreams , which brings us neatly to the headline act for the evening. Diary of Dreams had a fantastic look. They all had streaked faces, and did just look amazing.
They just looked the part as well. The guitarist forgoing a top, the keyboardist having a mesh top, and Adrian having a bulky , almost armoured top on. If I was casting for a film and needed an alternative band, they would be the look that I would be after.
They opened with Traum:A and then went on to play The Curse. I then realised just how good this gig was going to be. I've got the album that both of these are on, and whilst its quite good I wouldn't say that it was brilliant. Seeing them live, there was an electric feeling, as their stage presence reached out and touched you, and the emotions and feeling that the singer was pouring into the words burned their way into your brain.
The audience responded fantastically to the set, and even failing mic's couldn't stop the connection between the band and the crowd. A replacement mic came, and then went. At one point there were two being sung into simultanteously. All these efforts just caused the crowd to be more and more impressed.
It was all over far too soon. Two encores and then it was all actually over. I'll be after some more CD's of thiers and trying to go to any more of their gig's that I find.
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