Photo: Noam Galai
It was a chant that hadn’t been heard in Manhattan in more than two years, and it started a little after 9 p.m., as the anxious crowd who packed out the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom started growing more and more impatient: “EVAN-ES-SCENTS, EVAN-ES-SCENTS.” And though the last time Amy Lee floated across a stage George W. Bush was in office, you wouldn’t have been able to tell from the band’s adept, hard-charging performance.
But as the Evanescence frontwoman explained to the audience at last night’s extremely intimate secret concert, the one-off performance was quite necessary. After all, on November 8th, Evanescence will be performing before 40,000 screaming fans at the Maquinaria Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the band needed a little limbering up before heading south. “Thanks for being our guinea pigs,” Lee joked to the mostly female crowd.
Check out our collection of Evanescence photos.
With Evanescence hard at work on the follow-up to 2006’s The Open Door, it’ll be another year before they’re back in New York, making last night’s concert a one-of-a-kind experience for the band’s rabid fans, who sold out the show in five minutes.
Lee, looking rested and donning bulky black boots and a multi-colored dress that looked like it was stolen from the Project Runway work room, commanded the stage, stretching her operatic pipes and stomping across the stage like a pixie on speed during the set’s opener, “Going Under,” her voice as crisp and smoky as ever. The band, featuring fill-in guitarist James Black from Finger Eleven, sounded tight, and ripped through cuts like “The Only One” and “Missing” for the mesmerized audience, who hoisted smart phones and Flip cams in the air, recording every minute.
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Article Source: Rolling Stone : Rock and Roll Daily