Supports: Winterborn, Delain; Venue: Palasharp, Milan (Italy)
By: Lara Cappelli
It is just one year from the end of Sonata Arctica’s Unia tour, and they are already back with a new album and tour that will take them in 15 countries. Tonight the show was supposed to be at Alcatraz, but because of the huge demand of tickets it was moved to a way bigger venue, Palasharp.
| The audience was already shouting their name when Winterborn entered the stage. These six Sonata Arctica’s compatriots perfectly managed to entertain the audience, which wasn’t already as crowed as expected, but no less loud for that. The band is discographically active from not that much time, they were founded in 2004 and released two albums so far, but on stage it seems they’ve been around for ages, every member can be professional and playful at the same time. They didn’t take the plunge and interact much with the audience, they rather preferred to use the little time they had to show their skills as best as possible and they definitely did. This tour will surely give them the chance to popularize a bit more their music. |
| The second opening band of the night was Delain, a Dutch not-that-metal band founded by the ex Within Temptation keyboardist Matijn Westerholt. Recently their guitarist Ronald left the band and was replaced by Ewout Pieters as well as their bassist Rob Van Der Loo who wasn’t able to join the band on this tour and forced them to replace him with Roel Vink. Despite that, they seem well tight-knit on stage. I feared that the part of the audience which didn’t know them would be disappointed by the choice of picking up a band which isn’t as metal as the previous one, least of all as the following one. But I gladly proved myself wrong, I actually couldn’t believe my eyes and my ears when the audience didn’t stop shouting and cheering at them. They played mostly songs of their latest album, April Rain, even though they had some technical problems during one of them and the only instrument which was hearable was the drums. Despite that the band kept on playing as if nothing was happening and the problem got solved after a while. It was their second time in Italy and singer Charlotte pointed out it has been as magical as the first one. |
| Finally Sonata Arctica entered the stage when the venue was almost full. These Finnish metallers recently released their latest album The Days of Grays which was the final proof of their musical change and their new orientation, from being a follower of Stratovarius’ genre to a maker of their own one. And the confluence of so many people showed that this change has been definitely appreciated by their fans. Singer Tony Kakko has had some problems with his voice that forced him to cancel few shows last week and I must admit his voice saw better times, but he tried his best not to disappoint anyone. After all when you see him on stage you realise he’s born to do that, to be on stage and entertain people, with or without his voice at the best, and the audience knows it too. For the song Last Drop Falls they had Charlotte from Delain to sing with Tony, or rather to sing alone as Tony’s voice was unhearable during the duet. She made a really great job and was acclaimed by the audience once again. As always during the encore, Tony took some time to screw around with the audience, singing with it Queen’s song We Will Rock You, where the fans showed once more how loud they were. Every member seemed to enjoy a lot their time and never lost the opportunity to interact with the audience that, as Tony said, has been the best of the tour so far. |
More pictures of this gig available at sabinevangameren.com
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