The day arrives and though I’m unwell, I’m at the Forum. It’s been set up so that there is padded bench-like seating way at the back, a bar on either side, and the front is just empty, for the standing patrons. While I’d love to be closer to the stage, I’ll stick to the seating, thanks. Five-foot-nothing me doesn’t stand a chance in the mosh pit.
The hall is not even half-full, but a man dressed in a dark, well-cut suit, with some gravity-defying hair walks onto the stage with a guitar. I assume this is Imaad; he doesn’t introduce himself but says hello quietly to the audience and launches into his first song. The crowd is getting noisier as the venue begins to fill. This seems to be reflected in the first song. It sounds shaky and timid.
By stark contrast, he goes straight into the second song which I recognize as "Out in the Black" and wow! Everyone is now quiet and listening attentively. You can hear and almost feel the change in the air. That must sound incredibly wanky, but having a past as a stage fright stricken performer myself, you become attuned to these things. Fear – it’s a character builder. Weirdly, I feel nervous for the performer: singing and playing a guitar in front of a crowd waiting for a kick-arse rock band sounds a tad daunting.
Just as quickly as he’s grabbed the attention of the restless crowd, it’s lost in the third song – largely due to an awful intonation problem in a lower string. I’m trying to ignore it (and my rigid classical music training which seems grossly out of context here) but it keeps dropping, and taking the vocalist’s voice with it. Mind you, it seemed to happen at the same time some horribly glacial breeze whistled through the building as more people began to arrive.
All good performers will experience some sort of hiccup like that – it’s inevitable. The rest of the set goes smoothly and sounds much more confident. The other songs played were "Isolation," "Spell" (the title of which was confirmed after a bit of light-hearted banter with the audience which most likely involved comparing the Australian and Canadian/North American accents), a sixth track (the title of which was not audible to me from where I was, though it was announced), and the last track which I suspect was "Without" as I definitely recall listening to it online.
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