The re-birth of the former Pink Floyd director as a stage artist started at first with a rather unpretentious performance with a Greatest Hits show ( In The Flesh , 1999-2002), followed by a concert series that was dominated by Dark Side Of The Moon (2006- 2008). With the long-awaited performance of The Wall – which earned him no less than half a billion dollars in ticket sales between 2011 and 2013 – we saw the old, vicious boss who had a story to tell, but at the same time often creepy about being so detested protagonist from the album of the same name from 1979 came close. Story and performance at The Wall formed a whole that contributes to the success of the concerts. You get what you see .

None of that during the current Us + Them tour, which will be held on 18, 19, 22 and 23 June in the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. Triggered by the approaching US presidential election, Waters even made his doings unusually fierce against Trump, Israel, and the Western world in general in the fall of 2016, when it comes to protecting the weaker ones during a number of concerts in Mexico and the United States in the autumn of 2016. .

It proved to be a prelude to the tour that started a year ago and has been on display in Europe for the first time since April. No longer are the concerts a series of songs from the man’s rich oeuvre, but first and foremost ammunition for the story that the now 74-year-old wants to tell the visitor. To complete that story, the surprising Is This The Life We Really Want appeared in the spring of 2017 ? “Waters puts the magnifying glass on the world, looks critically at everything that happens and shares his chronicles sharply, unsparingly, with venom,” writes Written in Music on June 6 last year . For those who want to hear it. Waters releases the album without too much excitement. Not half a dozen of limited editions. Just an LP, a CD, a series of interviews to explain the album. And so that tour, which in this case brings us to the Altice Arena in Lisbon on a Sunday in May. A hall of the format Ziggo Dome, where the eyes of the world were focused all week long during the Eurovision Song Contest.

Refined Waters throws the visitor from the beginning sand in the eyes with a series of songs that are thrown into the hall without a single addition or any pretension. It becomes less noncommittal with three songs from the new album. Waters during Us + Them is supported by a band that includes drummer Joey Waronker, bassist Gus Seyffert and guitarist Jonathan Wilson, which is also the core with which he also Is This The Life We Really Want? recorded. With the final piece of the first set consisting of The Happiest Days of Our Lives , Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 and surprisingly enough Part 3 , Waters knows that he is assured of an audience that has lowered the defense – if any – and can start the party.

In the interval, texts are projected onto the immense, rectangular screen in the interval, which are an extension of the message on the album. When the band enters the stage again and puts in Dogs from 1977, an immense three-dimensional screen descends from the center of the room with a refined precision, a message that leaves nothing to the imagination against the growing polarization and to pour out justice over the public that does not know where to look for it. Together with Pigs and the Money and U s And Them from Dark Side Of The Moon from the same album, Waters shows that he is capable of fully deploying seemingly safe blockbusters to an ingeniously set-up story that catches the viewer’s breath and leave in confusion. The three numbers afterwards are actually an actual bonus to heal the wounds again.

Us + Them is perhaps the most powerful statement ever of an artist who, without protecting himself, travels around the world to proclaim that message and will continue to do so for as long as it is necessary.

Review by Charles Beterams