Oct 18: Short review from Phil Spooner <philip@arden.co.uk>
Arrived late (ish) to find a pleasingly large crowd inside this huge multi-purpose arena (full capacity approx. 20,000 - I'd guess that Mode filled around 90% of available seating). Missed support band Purity, but enjoyed the DJ set - presumably Tim Simenon with his decks, stage right (?). Anyway, the music was great - some moody dancey\electronic\light-industrial\trippy stuff. By the time Painkiller began the show, the "wave" had started around the outside of the arena - the folks on the floor didn't really get into this - well, where could it go exactly ???
The band played the standard "Singles Tour" set - including Condemnation & IFY. Both Dave & Martin were in great voice - this time around the band sounded (to me) noticeably heavier than on record and previous tours- I'd guess this is primarily due to the live drums but some of the new arrangements certainly gave the songs more "clout". WIME and POT especially. Dave seemed pretty energetic - throwing boxing shapes (?) between songs and showing of some of his new "moves". He certainly seemed to enjoy the gig - having enjoyed the MFTM and SOFAD tours, I'd say this was Dave's best vocal performance I'd seen.
The crowd was great - ETS, NLMDA, PJ and JCGE went down a storm - plenty of arm waving (in fact, the whole arena erupted). The new keyboard player looked very "Depeche" and played some neat solos (especially during NLMDA) and a more soulful version of Somebody than I'd previously heard. My only slight reservation (and I'm just being picky, so please don't take this too seriously) was that it took the band a while to pull the crowd back following the "slowy" section towards the end of the set. Having said that, I really enjoyed this section of the show - QOL, Home, Condemnation, IYR and OWILM - not too sure of the order though. It certainly showed another side to the Mode than the dancey, heavy, electronic, goth-pop (delete as applicable\agreeable) which formulated most of the set.
Highlights for me - well, all of it. BOAG and IFY were awesome, Martin's solo spot was excellent, Fletch was .... Fletch - he left the stage with a big smile on his face. The video effects for WIMS were quite thought provoking given the bands recent history – pretty disturbing in fact, although the image of Martin morphing into the girl’s chest was pretty funny. I'd say the most satisfying thing was observing the crowd’s reaction to a band that had
been through so much. I felt proud to be there and proud of the band.
Other stuff - the sound was as good (if not better) than anything I'd heard at the venue, but the T-shirts weren't too great!!!!!!! In all, a brilliant night out.