By Em Coulter
They say the future is female and tonight the line-up is a force of wild nature. Nottingham’s Motorpoint Arena gets to handle three rock groups who are planning to make the whole venue scream and shout. Spooky rockers New Year’s Day open up the arena, followed by performance metallers In This Moment, with the evening being closed by modern hard rock soon-to-be legends Halestorm.
The arena is full of fans waiting for the evening to begin, a lot of people not realising how popular all of these bands are, but once the bands start playing its obvious why people have paid the ticket fee.
New Year’s Day open up the arena for the evening with their spooky Los Angeles sound for a busy night ahead. For an opening band they truly have a fan base that has turned up early just for them, girls spotted on the front row with matching hair and outfits with vocalist Ash Costello. With each band on tonight bringing a different vibe to the line-up, NYC bring Halloween to the stage with their gothic persona and Killstar-esque uniforms.
The set is only 25 minutes long but whilst they are truly giving it all they’ve got, with tracks from their latest three releases, proving they’ve come far from their ‘My Dear’ days on Myspace roots. Every fan loves a cover of bigger bands but sadly NYD’s cover of ‘Fucking Hostile’ by Pantera sadly falls flat with tonight’s crowd: a little too polished compared to the gritty and dangerous original sound, this brings the set down a notch. Thankfully NYD has been a good enough warm up act for the ever-growing crowd to get hyped on.
In This Moment are truly a band who pull out all the stops and their set time is truly not long enough. With a huge backdrop of props, constant set and outfit changes this is a show to rival the likes of Alice Cooper. Vocalist Maria Brink is an unstoppable force in female metal and this evening she’s proving exactly why: screams, choreography and never missing a single note or beat despite the fast-paced set from the band.
The only complaint about the set is that they did not cover any material from before their album ‘Blood’, which could have really given the already great set a kick. Highlights of their set include ‘Adrenalize’, ‘Legacy’ with top hit ‘Whore’ closing the set with a bang, a lesson to think about and plenty of balloons floating around the arena. This may be a mixed bag of a line up but ITM are truly a band who are worth the ticket price alone.
To end the night is the tour’s headliners Halestorm, who first came to visit Nottingham in 2010 for the T’aste Of Chaos’ tour at this very venue as the openers. It’s been nearly ten years since that tour and Halestorm have risen beyond all hurdles to grab that headline slot to an excited crowd at Nottingham’s Motorpoint Arena.
Covering all aspects of their career the band hit off to an electric start with ‘Freak Like Me’ followed by ‘Love Bites (And So Do I)’ to get the crowd riled up for a roller coaster of an evening of fast paced rock to emotional ballads. Drummer Arejay Hale gives the crowd an impressive drum solo section between songs along with bassist Josh Smith taking part in laying down some sweet bass notes. Lzzy Hale make singing Halestorm’s songs look easy yet still full of pure raw emotion in every lyric, even those of the songs that are about the sexier parts of life she can still make as serious as the ones about heartbreak and power.
But the true highlights of the set are the piano medley towards the end of their set which included ‘In Your Room’, ‘Dear Daughter’ and a stunning cover of Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ which truly bought some of the crowd to tears with the emotion felt in that performance. Halestorm have proved tonight that they are a force to be reckoned with and on a never-ending path up to the top of the rock charts which has earned them places in arenas across the globe.
One of the great things about Halestorm is that when they play live, they never focus just on their newest release, they cover everything and have something for every kind of fan – new or old. The crowd has been treated to a minimum of one track from every album starting at their humble self-titled album ‘Halestorm’ to full blown rock stars with ‘Vicious’. Even after seeing the band year after year you can see the growth, tightness and enthusiam still growing more and more with each performance and album they bring out.
There are many things you could say about Halestorm’s set, all great and glowing, but one of the best parts is that the band are at their best stripped back. No over the top special effects or costumes (though it worked in the best way for ITM), this band are at their best doing a straight up hard rocking show. They could be on any stage and still bring an arena-sized show to the smallest or biggest crowd they could find.
- PHOTO CREDIT: All photos © Em Coulter/Über Rock. You can view our full gallery of photographs HERE.
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