On Thursday, February 7th, it was time for Dead Poet Society’s sold out show at the Melkweg in Amsterdam. Just over a year ago they were supporting Badflower in the smaller room of the same venue, while now headlining the main room. With Canadian band Ready the Prince supporting them on this tour. The ‘Fission Tour’ is dedicated to their latest album that was released on January 27th.
Half an hour after doors opened, it was time for the openers, Ready the Prince, to take the stage and warm-up the crowd. The trio from Canada put their heart and soul into their performance and the crowd swallowed them up happily moving along to their music. For their song ‘Sabertooth’ they encouraged the crowd to start a mosh pit and while it started out a bit small, it grew bigger and bigger as the song went on. ‘PB&J’ is one of the older songs on their setlist, starting out with a very groovy bass line. Their songs were very catchy, not just because of the lyrics, but you just feel the need to bop your head along to their rhythm. The Amsterdam date was the biggest show on their tour and with a capacity of 1500 people, the largest crowd Ready the Prince have played for so far. To spread the word about their music they brought vinyl and free stickers for everyone to the merch table.
After a short break it was time for Dead Poet Society. Only their bassist, Dylan Brenner, walked out on stage at first. He worked some magic with his bass, which got the crowd hyped up, before the rest of the band joined. Their set consisted of a nice mix of both old and new songs, with the first few songs being from their latest album Fission.They started with ‘Hard To Be God’, driving the crowd crazy from the get go. During ‘Tipping Point’ everyone but Jack Underkofler left the stage. He confessed to it being his second time ever playing this song so we were not allowed to judge him too harshly. The song gave everyone a nice slow break in between all the heavy songs and the crowd put up their flashlights.
“Alright, some more sad shit you ready?” said Jack Underkofler, before the song ‘I Never Loved Myself Like I Loved You’ came on. The intensity of the moment was cut by Dylan Brenner making it known that he wanted the yellow balloon that was bouncing around the venue. In turn the sadness of the song kept being broken up by laughter while the balloon bounced back and forth between the crowd and the stage, sometimes landing on Underkoflers head in the process. In typical fashion of these kinds of concerts someone lost a shoe in the mosh pit during ‘.SALT.’ and a rowing pit, where you sit down on the floor and make a rowing motion, broke out during ‘.CoDA.’. After the band left the stage and came back for the encore they had two more songs for us: ‘My Condition’ and ‘.intoodeep.’ Both very popular songs that made everyone give their last energy and scream the lyrics along as loud as they could. At one point the entire floor turned into a mosh pit where absolutely no one was safe anymore, an experience everyone should make at least once.
