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In This Moment – Mankato Civic Center – Mankato MN – May 21st 2019
Rock 95.7 and Mankato Civic Center present In This Moment with special guests Sevendust, Light the Torch and Hyde.
In This Moment came to the Mankato Civic Center on May 21 with special guests Hyde, Light the Torch, and Sevendust. Which means that if you were there, you were getting a huge show with a wide variety of music.
The evening began with Hyde. If you are not familiar with him, he’s a Japanese singer who has been in a variety of bands since 1988. His following here is huge, regardless, as a ton of women tore to the front of the stage when he came to it and immediately left upon his departure. Although his stage makeup at this show could be considered terrifying to those not familiar with him (his eyes looked like they were glowing with the contacts in them), the man is actually very attractive, captivating the large female audience that he has. Not to say the man isn’t talented. He’s a player of numerous instruments from the guitar to the saxophone and is a lead vocalist.
Light the Torch was next that night, a band that also had a lot of people there to see them for being an opener. If their music sounds at all familiar, but you know you have never heard the name Light the Torch, it’s because they used to be Devil You Know. Devil You Know was around from 2012 to 2017, when the band changed their name to Light the Torch in July of 2017. Their set was pretty short, shorter than that of any of the other bands that night, but was still beloved by the audience. It’s not my type of metal, as it’s very much that screaming metal, but they were very well received.
Sevendust took to the stage then, a band I have seen and photographed dozens of times, but didn’t actually were on the bill until that evening. As usual, they killed the set, clearly having a lot of fun while performing. They always seem to be that way though. They really know how to put on a good show and is the type of band you should just see, even if you don’t know any of their music. Unfortunately, they only played nine songs, but they were all extremely well performed. It was evident that a good percentage of the audience came to see them, as many people left after their performance.
In This Moment’s set that evening was a prime example of how you have to make the best of a bad situation or else it all just blows up in your face. Oh, where to begin? For those of you that have seen In This Moment before, you know that they have a huge stage setup. There is a lot going on. For example, on this particular evening, there was a platform for Maria to stand on and platforms on either side of her that held haunted house looking contraptions. Behind her was a small area where she would go to change her costumes throughout the show. There also is an incredible amount of dry ice and CO2 blasters. Keep that all in mind as your read onto the next paragraph.
In This Moment was scheduled to go onstage at 9:30pm. At 9:30pm, there were stagehands onstage looking at the CO2 canisters with really puzzled looks on their faces. From the prospective of the photographers at the front of the stage, this was downright laughable because you have to take it for what it is rather than complaining about the show going on late. They didn’t go on until 10pm and the problems continued. Maria went onto her platform and one of the stagehands nearly knocked her over, which if you have seen the heels she wears at the shows, could have really hurt her. The stage lights weren’t working properly, so there were stagehands literally banging on them to try to get them to work. Once they figured everything was working the best it could be, the piano for “Lay Your Gun Down” was brought out. Maria then asked if they could switch it to piano, pressing a key, which presented an organ sound rather than the piano one. The stagehands came out to fix it and while they did, Maria talked to the crowd, who was uncomfortably quiet. This went on for well over a minute and a half, when it was decided to cut the song from the set.
Despite all the issues, Maria thanked her crew for working hard. This was refreshing to see, as we have been to shows in the past where people have been fired on the spot when a light went out or the vocals somehow got cut. It’s good to see that people realize that it can’t go one hundred percent all the time. When it comes down to an overall grade of the night, it was about a fifty fifty. There were good performances and the effort was clearly put it, but the sets were short and four out of eleven of In This Moment’s songs were covers. The night could have been better as a whole, but like I said, the effort was fully heartfelt.
Review by Tracy Hansen photos by Kyle Hansen
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