Amaranthe - State Theatre - St. Petersburg, Florida - October, 30, 2014

 

 The State Theatre in St. Petersburg is quickly becoming one of our favorite venues in the area, it's the closest decent size venue that hosts local, national and international acts. The only downfall is that there is no photo pit, you have to try to push your way up to the stage to get good photos, for a show with a large crowd it can get very difficult to impossible at times. The crowd capacity for the venue is just over 700 people, for the Amaranthe show I would estimate the crowd at about 500, not packed but pretty well attended for a Thursday night show. When we heard that Amaranthe had a concert scheduled at the State Theatre we knew that this was a must attend show! We've loved Amaranthe since we first heard them, just never got the opportunity to see them live. For those who are unfamiliar with Amaranthe, they are a Swedish Metal band from Gothenburg (or for those who prefer Goteborg). Their vocalist Elize Ryd has, in the past, toured with Kamelot as a backup vocalist. Amaranthe have a very unique style and sound. There are 6 members of the band, 3 of them vocalists, Elize handles the clean female vocals, Jake E (also from the band Dreamland) takes care of the clean male vocals and is also Amaranthe's tour manager, and Henrik Englund handles the harsh male vocals and growls. The other members are Olof Morck on guitar, Johan Andreasson on bass and Morten Lowe Sorensen on drums. 

 

 When we got to the venue, we were greeted by Jake E, who had us set up for all-access and photo passes. We chatted with him for a couple of minutes before he had to get prepared for the show. Amaranthe was touring for their latest release, Massive Addictive, the St. Petersburg show was the second to last on their 5 week North American tour, after this one was Atlanta and then home for the band. The tour consisted of 18 dates in total in the U.S. and Canada. The tour first started as a co-headlining tour with Within Temptation, then Amaranthe headlined the last six shows as Within Temptation's tour came to a close. The St. Pete show was Amaranthe headlining with two opening bands. The first band was called Aionios, a band from Port Richey, FL who sounded a lot like Dream Theater, we were pretty impressed with their Prog. Metal style. The second band Silenmara was ok, but we are not fans of their style as they had more death metal type vocals. 

 

 When Amaranthe took the stage we were right in the front row. From the comments that we heard around us it sounded like a lot of the guys were there mainly to see Elize. She definitely has the looks but she is not one dimensional at all, she has the voice to back it up. Olof was right in front of us so we had a good view of his guitar playing, which is phenomenal. The rest of the band was amazing as well, very tight and they sounded great. Elize and Jake E both had technical problems with their microphones but it was resolved quickly. The band received a great crowd response and played for about an hour and a half. 

 

Amaranthe's setlist:

 

Digital World 

Hunger 

Invincible 

Razorblade 

Infinity 

1.000.000 Lightyears 

Burn With Me 

Trinity 

Massive Addictive 

True 

Afterlife 

Electroheart 

Drum Solo 

Leave Everything Behind 

Amaranthine 

Call Out My Name 

Automatic 

 

Encore:

Dynamite 

Drop Dead Cynical 

The Nexus 

 

 After the show we ended up going out the back stage door of the venue hoping to meet one or two members of the band, we actually ended up meeting the entire band. While there really wasn't a large selection of band merchandise, we did end up buying their latest CD Massive Addictive (which kicks ass by the way, we listened to it on the way home from the venue). Good thing we did as we got the entire band to sign it for us. All in all it was a great concert, we were happy to meet the band who were gracious enough to hang out for quite a while, take photos and chat with everyone after the show. We can't wait for Amaranthe to come back to Florida! 

 

 Special thanks to Amy Sciarretto from Atom Splitter PR for setting up our credentials and being a great contact, we were very impressed with her as she got back to us immediately. Also, an extra special thanks to Jake E, for taking care of us at the show.