When I saw I Prevail in 2023, I was fairly unimpressed. To be fair, I was there for the support act (Blind Channel), and I got ill before the second show I saw of them. Considering this, I decided to give them a second chance and I got tickets for their tour this year almost as soon as they went on sale. I wasn’t too positive about the show when they announced shortly before the tour started that they would have to do it without Brian. So to be honest, even on the road there I was still almost convinced that the evening wouldn’t go too well. Let’s see if I was right.
The venue
This was my second show at the Mitsubishi Electric Halle in Düsseldorf. Last year I saw Bring Me The Horizon there, so I was already familiar with the place. The venue is a small arena with a capacity of about 7.5k people. There are seats around the entire infield and there’s free choice basically, so you can decide if you want to stand or if you wanna sit and where you want to sit. That also means that if you plan to sit and you want some good seats, you should be early. There’s a wheelchair podium at the back of the room, behind the area for the sound engineers. Everything is on floor level, doors are wide enough, the way to the venue is, if I remember correctly, tarmaced and the infield has a wooden floor that gave me the vibe of a gym floor.
Drinks are quite pricey, as always in arenas and the like, and you have to pay Pfand on the cups (3€ if I remember correctly). There’s some food available (on the inside you get pretzels and crepes and outside of the side foyer there’s a food truck that sells slightly overpriced fries, curry sausage and similar snacks. I think I payed 4,50€ for a very small amount of fries).
The toilets were more or less clean and the sound at the venue was really good.
Kid Bookie
The opener Kid Bookie started on time and played a half-an-hour set. Their sound was kinda nice and fun, but it still didn’t quite catch me personally (too many rap parts for my liking) and to me it seemed like the majority of the audience wasn’t too much into their performance either. The most memorable thing about them for me personally was the fact that Kid Bookie is actually not an American artist, but from London. I don’t know why, but to me everything about him seemed … American. Oh and the second most memorable thing was the sheer amount of cursing coming from him. Honestly, I don’t even remember the music, but there were a damn lot of curses …
Set it off
Next up were Set It Off with some solid pop punk. I didn’t know them before and immediately went to IG to follow them to keep up with them because I enjoyed them so much that I’d probably go see them as a headliner as well. Their stage performance was great and I loved their sound. The crowd was also a lot more involved now, so I personally feel like that was some kind of shared experience. I absolutely don’t remember anything about their setlist though and I didn’t have the time to check them out since after the show, but I had a great time. They announced to come back to Germany next year (if I remember correctly), so I really hope I’ll be able to catch them again. For me personally, they also fit the line-up of the evening very well.
I Prevail
I checked their starting time, but I forgot it – but I was very determined to check the time because when I saw them last time (last year with Blind Channel and Trashboat), I was super disappointed that their set was only about an hour long. This time, I Prevail played for roughly 1h20 if I remember correctly, encores included.
During the first two songs (There’s Fear In Letting Go, which was already their opener at the last tour, and Body Bag) I feared for the worst because Eric and Dylan didn’t exactly start too well in replacing Brian’s clear vocals. BUT it got a lot better throughout the set. Partly they had the crowd sing Brian’s parts, but later I feel like mostly Dylan took over (which was for the better, because no matter how much I love Eric, I’d say his range is just different than Brian’s and it didn’t go too well).
Personally, I loved the largest part of the setlist. I did compare it to the last tour and generally found a lot of similarities except for maybe 2 songs and the overall order of the set, yet to me personally it was a lot more pleasing this time. So I don’t know if last time their performance just wasn’t as energetic (this time they were doing amazing, although I have to say that except for Eric, there wasn’t much movement happening on stage), or if I just didn’t know enough songs back then or whatever … This time I definitely liked it. Only that I personally could’ve lived without the Nine Inch Nail cover of Head Like A Hole, which sounded just plain boring (tear me apart, but NIN is definitely not my type of music).
The song that impressed me personally the most during this concert was Breaking Down. First of all, Eric’s speech before the song was absolutely touching and relatable, but also the visuals on the video screens during the song were haunting and totally on point. Often I’m not a too big fan of video screens because I often feel like a lot of bands don’t make use of them all too well. To be honest, that was the case with a big part of I Prevail’s set as well, but for Breaking Down it created an atmosphere that was beautiful and catching. I loved it.
I personally thought I would be satisfied with hearing Deep End and Bad Things live, but during the set I noticed that they played quite a few more songs I’d consider favourites.
So all in all, I was very pleased after the show and I’m happy that I went, despite being sceptical at first. I left with a very positive impression and I’d definitely go see them again – next time hopefully with Brian again, because I did indeed miss his vocals a lot. But they did great, even without him. I’d go again.
I didn’t buy merch though. Because a) it was pricey and b) come on, guys, that tour shirt was one of the most boring tour shits I’ve seen in a while.