By Jason Walker
Double dipping is the order of today, I’ve made a trip down to Tilburg on another day of extreme heat and moved from 29c in Amsterdam to 36c in Tilburg but good job the aircon is great! Anyway, tonight is a special performance from Voyager, a full two hour set of all sorts of stuff from their back catalogue and I wasn’t going to risk missing this! I’ve got my dancing shoes ready, and my voice prepped for singing along to this amazing synth prog metal band so let’s have it.
What we thought was the actual start of the set turned out to be a slideshow of somewhat silly photographs of the band over the years accompanied by goofy music. Following running over a repeat by a few slides, the proper intro starts with the band walking on as images of themselves in much younger forms flash up on the screen.
Voyager never fails the aesthetic check either, sequinned suit jackets, a draped furry jacket and immaculate hair, it’s all there. The crowd erupts into a sea of bouncing arms and singing voices the moment “Colours In The Sun” kicks off, with the lighting matching the intensity with beautiful sweeps of pastel colours. Kicking off “Dreamer” with a pretty spiffy drum solo is one of the reasons I love mixing up live shows so much! Maybe Danny’s choice to try and take his jacket off in the middle of singing “Hyperventilating” was a bit ill advised but with some brief help he made it work while still keeping some style points. The comedy routine of changing the chorus parts based on screen prompts is fantastic and gets properly big laughs from the audience.
We stop for a moment to talk through the journey of Danny’s cancer diagnosis, uh, through the lens of Dr. Schwarzenegger for a bit of levity. Danny mentions he managed to get the hospital to play Mirar for his radiation sessions which is a hell of a choice. Following this up with “I’ve Seen Better Days” was a pretty classy choice though. One of the familiar melodies of their Ghost Mile album fades in and I get goosebumps as the ethereal opening for “To The Riverside” builds before its riffy and rhythmic fusion opens the floodgates.
As another switch in gears, apparently Voyager are now also potentially looking at ‘diversifying their income streams’ in the form of moving into Children’s novels. I suppose it’s definitely unique in the form of band merch, after some ridiculous banter between the band, Alex takes it upon himself to speedrun the words a bit while Danny supplies a melody. I’ve had a fair few firsts in terms of bands live shows recently but I have to admit, a children’s novel at a live show is definitely a new one.
One of their deeper cuts is accompanied by line-up posters of many of their older appearances and tours and I’m overjoyed to see TechFest making an appearance on that. And before we know it were back into the children’s book, making light of some of their your journeys and poking fun at their manager of all things, accent and all. Some of the deeper cuts admittedly went over my head a bit but that’s just how it is for a band with such an expansive catalogue of music. The absolute reason I’m here though is how a band like this can properly work a personalised show and be a bit silly rather than all business, do your set and bugger off when it comes to an hour long festival slot.
We’re nearing the end of the evening set and the news coverage of their Eurovision bid plays along on the screen as a pre-cursor to “Promise”. A song that they should be bloody proud of and I vehemently supported on the 2023 edition over the UK because it was *actually really good*. Admittedly “Ascension” really took me by surprise as their set closer though, always here for more Ghost Mile representation. And that’s it for the main real set but my cup runneth over as we get an encore as well, lovely.
Danny seemingly forgetting the lyrics to “White Shadow” for a moment but he gets back into the groove so after a momentary goof it’s all good. Overall the setlist was actually pretty surprising and we went down much deeper cuts than I initially anticipated. This was very much a show for the long term fans with them reaching far back in the years and engaging in state antics that would otherwise eat up valuable time on a shared bill. I don’t doubt the forthcoming RADAR festival bill may be a bit more focused given the constraints but this was a show worth making the effort for. Long live Voyager!
The tour concludes with select Australian dates in November
All content © Über Röck 2026.