Collective Soul Lights Up Victoria

Collective Soul returned to Victoria for the second time in about two years this weekend. The last time, they were in the Royal Theatre, with a stage-full of guitars and nostalgia.

This time, the 90’s nostalgia was there in full force, but with some new tunes and a new album on the table it was a bit more of a diverse show. In addition, moving to an arena venue gave the band a chance to really tear it up. Ed Roland was working out big time taking up the stage with a huge presence, inciting some of the audience to work on getting some shin splints themselves.

The epic 90’s tracks that you heard many times over on the radio came back to life in fine form. The audience that was there for the music, were pleased.The crowd that just came to party…seemed to do alright too. The entire floor were on their feet and ready to rock. The remaining audience, making up a modest crowd of 1,800 or so in Save-On-Foods Memorial Arena were mostly seated in the stands. The room went a little bit wild for songs like The World I Know, and a lot wild for Shine and Gel.

A video posted by Mel Z (@melzsnaps) on Apr 17, 2016 at 12:23pm PDT

Collective Soul, with frontman Ed Roland, his little brother Dean Roland playing guitar along with Jesse Triplett, bassist Will Turpin and summer Johnny Rabb also had some new songs that did not disappoint. The new songs were perfect Collective Soul to fill your crunchy guitar soul. Well, they filled mine anyway. The room stayed into it through the new songs, which is not always the case when an artist tries something new on you.

Ed Roland gave us some heavy compliments on our beautiful city, which he mentioned they’d been out enjoying and taking photos of all day — naturally, we can relate — that’s exactly what we do on a gorgeous spring day in Victoria.

Mel Z – Midday Show 10am – 3pm Ocean 98.5