This review was posted by Mark Reed on the Ceremony List

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A muddy, rainswept Sunday afternoon in Finsbury Park hardly bodes well for a gig of legend. Finsbury Park is like the Somme. Mud gets everywhere, and everyone is covered in it. It's a war out there.

Thanks to the draconian licensing laws - a 10pm curfew, just like when you were young - New Order come on at 8.15pm, and it's all over by 9.55pm.
Which, for those of us who don't like standing all day in a monsoon reliving a World War, means we miss an apparently mundane set by Echo & the
Bunnymen, a stellar performance by the misplaced Super Furry animals, and a well-received set by French ambient/experimentalists Air. All of which have been bumped forward thanks to an arcane law that hasn't been updated in the
past 85 years. Either that, or the complaints of residents who don't mind seeing people shortchanged.

And onto New Order, who seem to be ploughing the comeback trail with far more credibility than most, even if only by virtue of the fact that
their most recent album - the unexpected pleasure that is "Get Ready" - sounds like a band who are not yet past their prime. However, not that we get much of that here - these days, the currency of New Order is largely nostalgia.
It's hardly something the band try and dispel - only a third of their set is less than 15 years old. And you're never more than 7 minutes in any
direction from a Joy Division song.

Which, despite the inescapable fact that Joy Division were one of the most original bands the world has ever heard, is oddly like seeing say, the Dead Kennedys' with a new singer. It's good, but it's just not quite right.
Especially as New Order have recently broken with a 18 year tradition and play a plethora of Joy Division songs at every opportunity:
"Transmission", "Atmosphere", "She's Lost Control", "Love Will Tear Us Apart", and an
appalling version of "Digital" (complete with John Simm from the celluloid version of 'Joy Division' as seen in 24 Hour Party people) are tossed off without much care or attention.

Parts of it still sound fantastic, that is, when New Order aren't busy being a tribute band to their former incarnation. When they bother to play their own songs such as the levitational "Crystal", the glorious sunkissed
melancholy of "Regret", the chaotic celebration that is "World In Motion", or the sleek, slick, and still futuristic "True Faith", they sound -
even though these songs are many years old - exciting, innovative, and irresistable. Apart from the tired "Blue Monday".

New Order were one of the first bands to try and integrate the potential of the machine with a the warmth of man. And whilst it sounds oddly
Kraftwerkian, New Order prove that technology is just a tool, and emotion is the engine that drives us all. How cool is coldness? Very.

"Those who make peaceful revolutions impossible will make violent revolutions inevitable" President Kennedy

There's no pleasing some people is there ? For a start, the early finish has more to do with local residents than any licensing laws.

Secondly, as Hooky says, they (JD songs) are good songs and they are proud of them, so why shouldn't they play them ? They wrote them !

For my part, I enjoyed Paris a lot more than Finsbury, but then again I always did prefer indoor venues. Having said that, the band were a lot tighter for the first eight songs at Finsbury than they were in Paris, the missed intro to She's Lost Control seemed to trigger a decline into cock-up after cock-up, with Hooky having a bit of a mare at times !

Big NO fan, but must admit although
lads seemed quite keen (despite the rain)
I was standing half way back and sound quality
was pretty naff.
What was hooky playing during 60 miles an hour ??
sounded like another bloody song !!!!
Second half of show was back to the best
and sound quality a bit better....
Agree with other guy that indoors much better
Liverpool last year was the best I have seen
them (out of about 20 times !!!)
Finally, they where filming the show on Sunday
any idea when its on ?