Pluggin’ in
Six-band lineup means
skimpy set from Skillet
Jillian Clemente
readingeagle.com/voices
READING EAGLE, READING, PA.
TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 2014
Voices intern
Senior, Wilson
12
P
anheads reunited at Santander Arena on March
22 to enjoy the Christian
rock band Skillet, which
blew the roof off the place.
Skillet is my absolute favorite
band. I had seen Skillet at Creation Festival 2013, and my socks
were almost literally blown off by
the signature pyrotechnics.
Well, let’s just say that fans got
cheated this time around.
The concert started half an
hour earlier to make room for
the six bands. We As Human, a
hard Christian rock band, was the
first to play. It’s like a hardcore
Skillet or a combination of Skillet and Red. Next were Brandon
Heath and Mandisa, who sang
very well together and got the
crowd going with hits like “Overcomer” (Mandisa) and “Give Me
Your Eyes” (Heath).
Between both of these warmup sets and Third Day was a
speaker, Sammy, who read scripture and promoted sponsoring
a needy, hungry child in a Third
world country.
Not to sound anti-Christian, but
the speaker bothered me because
he messed up the concert atmosphere. It was great that the evening was centered around God, but
I didn’t like the 20-minute breaks
between sets filled with Sammy’s
talk. I prefered having excited chatter about Skillet with my concert
buddy Courtney Strickler, a sophomore at Conrad Weiser.
Christian country rock band
Third Day rocked the stage for
about an hour, playing various
hits from the last 20 years, including “Revelation.” Going into
the concert, I wasn’t a huge fan
of Third Day but as they played,
I bobbed my head more and more,
really getting into their music.
Third Day’s encore song transitioned right into the next singer,
Skillet
Concert review
“The Roadshow Tour”
Artists: Skillet, Third Day, Brandon
Heath, Mandisa, Peter Furler, We
As Human
Grade:
Venue: Santander Arena
Date: March 22
B
Peter Furler.
Ex-Newsboys leader Furler kept
up the crowd’s already immense
energy in preparation for Skillet.
What can I say? It was amazing. I almost lost my voice from
screaming during the introductory video. Luckily the microphones were working well so I
could hear John Cooper’s and Jen
Ledger’s beautiful vocals over Korey Cooper’s and Seth Morrison’s
rockin’ guitars and all the other
concert-goers’ screams.
“Hero” started out the night
with a bang and from there, the
energy was non-stop. “Sick Of It”
followed, with John Cooper saying how Jesus, his hero, is here to
save us, despite whatever trouble
plagues us. After those first two
songs, a significant number of
baby boomers left because they
probably came to see Third Day.
Skillet’s performance was
mind-blowing. They got great
crowd interaction and had high
energy, even on softer songs.
The astonishing lighting worked
perfectly with the feel of the muisc.
Sadly, there were no pyrotechnics. And just when the hit song
“Rebirthing” was over, so was the
concert. No encore. Only 45 minutes of Skillet.
I will treasure those 45 minutes, but I wanted quality and
quantity. There were simply too
many bands and not enough time
to fully appreciate all of them.