CONCERT REVIEW: Palaye Royale Rock Amsterdam With Amazing Second Netherlands Show

Palaye Royale came to the Netherlands again! It hasn’t even been that long since they last were here but they can’t seem to get enough of our country. They took Starbenders and Yonaka with them this time. It was the perfect moment for Dutch fans of the bands. They were in the Netherlands for three days in a row. All shows in different venues, one in Paradiso, one in Melkweg and the last one in 013, which is more in the south of the country. We got to be at the Melkweg show ourselves, we also got to interview Starbenders and Emerson Barrett from Palaye Royale.

The venue was around ¾ full when it was time for the first band. Starbenders. No one really seemed to expect anything special of them, because they were the first band of three, except for a group in the front. You could see them dancing along with the music more than the others who didn’t know them yet. The thing Starbenders did great was getting the crowd to wake up at the start of the evening. You could see relatively a lot of people sing and clap along at moments when they had to.

This in combination with the amazing vocals of lead singer Kimi Shelter made for a great performance, she can have a soft voice that would fit in with a lot of genres, but she can also go way rougher which she managed to balance really well. Not just her but the entire band had some amazing energy. You often see with bands, that are the first of three, that they shy away from what they want to do and going all out. Not with Starbenders. They were all over the stage, interacting with each other and the crowd and stealing the show overall.

It was Yonaka their turn after that. The venue was already filling up more, it started to get really busy around this point. More of the crowd started to participate in everything too. Even when Yonaka played some new songs from their upcoming album. They teased this album with a release the day after the Melkweg concert. “Welcome to the new era.” Those are the words they use on their Instagram.  Overall Yonaka performed great, go see them live if you like to feel a lot of bass during concerts because their music surely has some amazing bass.

You could feel the room fill with anticipation once it was time for the main band, Palaye Royale. It started off with some voice talking over the speakers after which they opened with Nightmares. In my opinion, one of their best songs to open with. I’m not the only one who has that opinion because the crowd got so fired up that pits already started forming during that same opening song. Of course, Palaye Royale wouldn’t be Palaye Royale if they didn’t break stuff or if they didn’t do things their way, Remington Leith, the lead singer, broke the first microphone stand fairly early in the set. I’m saying the first one because he broke multiple microphones and microphone stands during the time that they were playing.

One of the funniest things to see was the security guard that had to follow Remington everywhere. Remington got a raft after a while and usually, he shoots everyone with a water gun from there. This time it was the security guard who shot everyone with it though. This was most likely due to the ceiling being relatively low and water getting on the lights if Remington got to use the water gun himself. The guard also had to follow him when he climbed the stairs and on the balcony in the crowd. He even got so heavily involved that the guard was holding him upside down (suggested by Remington of course) from the balcony. Remington also randomly jumped in the crowd and you could just see the guard jump up and follow him to the photo pit to make sure that he stayed safe.

Another great moment was when they played Oblivion. It was completely dark with just a few spotlights. Remington was on the keyboard and performed the song acoustically really well. The entire crowd was silent and appreciating how beautiful it all was. It was so real and you could hear and feel every single emotion in his voice.

Their set was absolutely amazing, they even played an extra song. This didn’t have a happy reason sadly because someone fainted during the last song. This caused them to finish their set with Get Higher instead of Fever Dream.

I would highly recommend going out to see Palaye Royale live. They really offer one of the most unique concert experiences out there. I don’t think any review or video could describe how insane it is to be there. Check out the pictures we took there below!

Starbenders:

YONAKA:

Palaye Royale:

Aspen van der Wijst

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