Linkin Park @ Birmingham LG Arena, 9th November 2010
We arrived to LG arena in Coventry on the November 9th 2010 and were welcomed by a massive amount of cars all joining a queue of a good manner and one by one we were all hushed into a car park that seemed miles away from the arena. We were showed into our spot and parked the car. From there we had a choice of walking to the arena or waiting for a bus, and we opted for the bus. Soon enough it arrived and we all climbed on and the bus was filled to its limits, finally closing its doors and drove us towards the arena. People were cheerful and chatting away and everyone seemed to be in a very high spirit.
The bus drove us straight past the entrance, revealing behind the corner a breath taking long queue that just kept on going and going. I thought “lucky if we get in before the encore”, mistakingly I thought we were early. We joined the queue making a few jokes with the people I was with. After some time of waiting a member of staff came down the queue and asked everyone if they had seated tickets. We all answered in a excited sync “yes!!” and we were ushered towards the door, to a queue which was far shorter than the original one. Finally inside.
The place was buzzing with people. The LG arena has a quite large capacity and apparently the tickets had been nearly sold out, so about 13500 people were watching the warm up band or waiting to buy merchandise or having a beer with a burger in the lounge. Armed with a new T-shirt from the merchandise we took our seats and we got there just on time for when they started playing at 8.30pm.
It all started with the first song of the new album A Thousand Suns and it the set a pace for a crowd jumping and singing along. They had a very good mix of songs from the older albums as well as their newest one, putting it into a harmony, just like their albums, all songs melting together into this mad and passionate extravaganza of alternative rock and something new.
I purchased their latest album some weeks prior to the gig and to be fair, I am glad I did, otherwise the gig wouldn’t had been as enjoyable. The reason being their style has changed and I suppose its moving into more experimental and it took me that little bit longer than before to fully feel end enjoy the album fully. Some people had heard the latest album waiving and singing along, others hadn’t, some people just listened and taking in the new material to digest and decide what they think of it.
During the first song people of the seating area stood up and remained standing for most of the gig, people singing and dancing on their spots. Looking down the crowd was moving with the music also creating a few mosh pits. The quality of sound was really good and the stage lighting was simple and impressive. The screen in the back ground was hypnotising with all its content, making the experience more visual especially for the ones that were further away and couldn’t see the band in detail. Their stage was of an Interesting shape, a triangle, and it was built in different levels for the various instruments to be played on each level.
It was somewhat surprising when their lead singer forgot the words of a couple songs. Surely this should be avoided at any cost. However he was joking about it and moved along not making a fuss about it and the show went on.
I thought at one point they didn’t interact with their audience that much, however they really did something different I haven’t seen in a long time with a big world band. They invited a member of the public to come on stage to play a guitar for the song ‘ Crawling ‘ and a young man was pointed out an brought to stage. He really took everything out of the opportunity and played really well. Everyone was cheering as this was an opportunity not many get.
The bands turnaround for between each song was short and as an american event this was very well organised with no corner cutting.
Linkin Park finished their set with ‘ Bleed it out’ from Minutes to Midnight album and left the stage after playing about 1.5 hrs. It was a very good gig and the quality of sound and putting up a show for a live audience is impressive.
Review – Annette Erkintalo
Photos – Katja Ogrin
That’s a very strange review, seems like the reviewer doesn’t have english as a first language, or it’s been translated from another language into english rather clumsily. Glad she enjoyed it, but hard to get any depth due to the odd use of words/phrase.
You’re quite right Mark. Her first language isn’t English and she’s not one of our regular reviewers. She was kind enough to put a few words together to accompany the photos as none of our reviewers were at the gig.