Well… that was an interesting experience.
Set off the London at 9.20am missed the train to Sheffield and thus missed the train to London- we then had to pay £70 to transfer the tickets.
Finally got to Camden Lock Hotel at 4pm. Lounged around in the hotel room until 6pm at which point we got changed and went down the Dev (a goth pub in Camden). Met up with the lovely Psycho Smurf at 6.30pm- after establishing which of the blokes with long hair and a beard he actually was. Went down to the venue at 7pm. nearly had a heart attack at the sight of the beer prices- I ended up very dehydrated by the end of the night. Had a chat with the girl on the CXS merchandise stand, bought a poster, a copy of frozen embers, a sticker and a postcard. Then worked out how much cash I’d need at Leeds- works out around £90 eeek!!!!
Then we had a chat with Chris Brantley who absolutely made my day when he said "Oh! You must be Vyctorya then!" and shuck my hand. When my brain recovered from the shock, we chatted about the tour and the new album. Turns out he reads the fansofcruxshadows yahoo list- though it’s still really cool that he knew who I was. Got a photo taken with him and Rachel- who was mostly being quiet and smoking a lot.
Then Dave (my boifriend) decided we should go talk to Rogue. He was rushed off his feet and we didn’t get to say much but we both got pictures taken with him- the caption competition will be coming soon :)
We missed the support bands- we had never heard of any of them anyway. Went through to the stage area, as the band was finishing setting up, tried to find a good place to take pictures- ended up stuck at the back behind a bloody pillar. Tried to stand on the stairs but a very large lady basically pushed/dragged my down them- I managed to keep my balance (an achievement for me) but my shoulder was wrenched quite badly and two days later I still have little use of my left arm. I also stupidly forgot "Phantoms’ First Rule of Fishnets"- don’t wear fishnets on bare feet if you're going to wear lace up boots that are hard to open- I lost the feeling in most of my toes halfway through the gig- ow.
The gig itself was wonderful. The first 60% was based around the story of "The Fall of Troy".
The Set List-
Intro- Into the Ether
Winterborn
Binary
Cassandra
Seraphs
Love + Hatred
Return
Go Away
Deception
Tears
Storm/Citadael
Encores: Marilyn
Resist/R
Set list given to Old Bob by Martin the lighting guy then copied out for Phantoms by Old Bob any errors are their fault. As you can see, they only played two songs from the era before "Wishfire". Though it all worked together VERY well, a few older tracks would have been nice.
Rogue did his usual set and chair climbing and prowled through the audience a lot. I managed to get a total of 77 photos, videos and sound clips, which will be added to the site as soon as possible.
There were a number of very interesting spoken word bits between the songs that told the story of Troy which I hope to record at the Manchester gig. Into The Ether heralded a return to the beautiful but weird vocalisations of the "Mystery of the Whisper" era Cruxshadows ( "ohhheeeeooohhh, heeeeeyyyyyyaaaeyyy yooouuueeeeooooohhh, aaaAAaaaAAAAaeohhheeeeyooooooo....."). Whilst Cassandra ( "no one hears Cassandra cry" ) was reminiscent of the song "Ave Maria". Winterborn was without doubt the best song of the night though and I’m very glad that it is available on CD now- I don’t think I could wait three more months!
Through most of the gig Dave was hunting out people will cameras and forcing fliers into their hands but when "Marilyn" started, he grabbed the camera off me and forced me towards the front of the venue. Two girls were dragged up to replace to the Dancers at the start of the song and at the end he started trying to pull people up but the girl in front of me didn’t want to go so I threw my arms out and was the first person onto the stage. This made my day for a second time that night. There’s an embarrassing story connected to this but I’m not going to explain it unless photographing evidence of it turns up, which I hope it wont LOL. When the song finished and we all the left the stage I fell and hurt my spine- but its not a night out for me unless I’m badly injured at the end of it.
After much screaming and shouting the band came back and sang Resist/R (which is apparently pronounced "Resistor") at which point I finally abandoned the camera and actually danced for a bit. Everyone in the room danced like mad and it was a great end to a perfect night.
We left almost as soon as the set finished and said bye to Psycho Smurf and his friends before limping back to the hotel. We finally got back to York at 8pm on Tuesday night. Bloody trains!!!!!!!!! Grrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!
If you would like to submit photos, opinions, comments or reviews please email them to me at uk_tour@devotee.co.uk
