For the first time since the Videotron Center opened in 2015, women were the big stars of an evening of heavy rock on Saturday, and it was the guys who were the support staff.
There may come a time when we won’t make such a big deal out of the headliners of a rock show, but we have to admit that still in 2024, an Evanescence–Halestorm double, groups led by the powerful voices of Amy Lee and Lzzy Hale, remains a rarity.
Photo Didier Debusschère
“Do you realize how special it is tonight. There are a lot of ladies on the stage,” Lzzy Hale even remarked, recalling that women have to do twice as much as their male counterparts to be heard and noticed.
A year and a half after warming up the stages for Muse in the same Videotron Center, Evanescence was this time the highlight of the evening, and by right.
Even though he gave his most recent album of 2021 a little too much love, The Bitter Truth (eight titles out of the 17 on the program), the Arkansas group was impeccable.
Amy Lee held the note with admirable clarity and, alongside her, Tim McCord, Troy McLawhorn, Emma Anzai and Will Hunt delivered with surgical precision the alternative-metal rock that made Evanescence famous in the mid-2000s .
«Merci»
These are obviously the songs from the album Fallenwhich celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, who remain the bread and butter of the group. Going Under served as a detonator in the first quarter of an hour while the ballad My Immortal et Bring Me To Life lifted the amphitheater at the end of the course.
Photo Didier Debusschère
A video montage showing archives of the group, presented before the song Imaginarystirred up the nostalgic touch of the concert.
Sitting at her piano, just before singing My ImmortalAmy Lee wanted to salute the loyalty of the group’s admirers. “Thank you for making the last twenty years so special. It’s more than I dreamed of. I never thought I would be so comfortable on stage.”
Halestorm: screaming for your life
Lzzy Hale, intense singer of Halestorm. Photo Didier Debusschere
Like Evanescence, Halestorm returned to the Videotron Center after a performance that left its mark, in 2023, as the opening act for Volbeat in the case of the Pennsylvania quartet.
Like last year, singer Lzzy Hale left everything on stage. A rocker in the most primal sense of the term and deep in her soul, the young forty-year-old screamed her life like a woman possessed while handling her spectacular six-string with a virtuosity that was beautiful to behold.
She was particularly stunning when she transformed a cover of Crazy On You in a sort of gospel-metal moment during which, alone on her knees, the spotlight on her, Hale exhibited all the power of her vocal cords.
She also made room for her colleagues. Amy Lee came to join her for the piano ballad Break In while Daniela Villareal Vélez burst into the middle of Familiar Taste of Poison to give him the answer on the guitar.
The Warning: a family affair
Daniela Villareal Vélez, singer of the group The Warning. Photo Didier Debusschere
The sisters Daniela, Paulina and Alejandra Villareal Vélez are between 24 and 19 years old, arrive from Mexico and form The Warning, a hard rock trio which sounds like a ton of bricks, we discovered at the start of the evening.
The most surprising thing? They formed their group in 2013, when they were just kids, which didn’t stop none other than Kirk Hammett from praising Paulina’s drumming, when she was only 14 years old, after having it on a video on YouTube
In short, all that to say that in 30 short minutes, The Warning showed a promising mastery of the codes of rock which earned him an ovation at the end of his performance.
