18-10-2009 Dream Theater

Supports: Bigelf, Unexpected, ; Venue: Jahrhunderthalle, Frankfurt (Germany)
By: Nina Mende

This Sunday night I spent in a bigger venue than the past couple days: at the Jahrhunderthalle in Frankfurt. Thousands of people were waiting outside of the venue, anxious to get in.

Later on inside, the venue wasn’t too crowded but still quite full. Four bands were about to play tonight. Opener was Unexpect from Montreal, Canada. Unexpect is an avant-garde extreme metal band with an amalgamation of different styles of music, including black metal, death metal, progressive metal, melodic heavy metal, European Classical music, opera, medieval music, jazz, electro, ambient, noise, gypsy music, and circus music. The band’s debut album, Utopia, was independently released. The band only had word of mouth and the Internet to market the work. With unorthodox distribution and online support, the album sold successfully. And now they were here, performing of these thousands of people. Female fronted they rocked out big time. The metal fans banged their heads and shook their hair, shouting along and going along. None of the band members stood still for not even a second. With melodic metal combined with harsh riffs and fast double-kick beats they went through their half an hour performance. A very impressive but short show.

Up next was Bigelf. Bigelf is a psychedelic/glam-tinged hard rock outfit from Los Angeles, California formed in 1991 by founding members Damon Fox and Richard Anton. The first line-up change came when Steve Frothingham replaced Sullivan in late ’95; soon afterward founding member Richard Anton would exit the band. Continuing on as a three-piece, they recorded “Money Machine” in 1997. Record Heaven would eventually release it in the summer of 2000. This led the Elves to tour Scandinavia where they would become a quartet again with addition of Finnish bass player Duffy Snowhill. In 2001, Finnish guitarist Ace Mark would also join the ranks replacing Butler-Jones. Now with a solid formation and regaining focus Bigelf recorded “Hex” and signed with Warner Music Sweden in 2002. The band attained cult status overseas, most notably in Northern Europe and Scandinavia, Finland being the homeland of Mark and Snowhill. Hardly anybody in the audience knew them before, but most people were impressed by the show. Bigelf is different from common rock bands and so is their show. Their outfits reminded of various movie or story characters. For a song the drummer of Dream Theater joined the guys on stage and took over the drums. The Bigelf drummer was sitting at the side of the stage air-drumming along during that. The guys were all very friendly and enjoyed performing on stage. You could tell that they are professional and really passionate about what they are doing. Bigelf set up a very impressive 30 minutes performance and I hope to get to see them again and longer soon. A band you should definitely check out if you are interested in something that is far beyond mainstream.

Next band was a Swedish band called Opeth. Opeth is a Swedish heavy metal band from Stockholm, formed in 1990. While the band has been through several personnel changes, singer, guitarist, and songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt has remained Opeth’s driving force since joining promptly after its inception. They fooled everybody who didn’t know them by playing slow songs for the first 15 to 20 minutes before they began blasting of their heavy metal music. Most people in the audience were fans though and knew exactly what was going on. The singer was very talkative on stage. The fans went wild during their performance which lasted for almost an hour.

Last band of the evening was Dream Theater who had a great stage set up, the drumset was very impressive as well. Dream Theater are an American progressive metal band formed in 1985 under the name Majesty by John Myung, John Petrucci, and Mike Portnoy while they attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, before they dropped out to support the band. Though a number of lineup changes followed, the three original members remain today along with James LaBrie and Jordan Rudess. Dream Theater has become a successful progressive metal band. Although the band has had one successful hit (“Pull Me Under” in 1992, which received extensive MTV rotation), they have remained relatively out of the mainstream. Their music was very melodic and much calmer than of the bands before. But they also had some thriving riffs. Another thing about Dream Theater is their many solos and instrumentals during the show. Each song seems to be lasting forever. With a pure and catchy voice the singer went straight to the heart. The entire show reminded me a lot of several 80s bands. The show lasted for about 90 minutes. The entire venue was clapping and singing along, enjoying the light show and have the music capture their minds. A great closing for the evening.