01-10-2016 Cain's Offering - Tempelores Magazine

[schema type=”event” evtype=”MusicEvent” name=”01-10-2016 Cain’s Offering” description=”Support: Crimson Sun By: Laureline Tilkin-Franssens” street=”Nosturi ” city=”Helsinki” country=”FI” ]

When I heard Cain’s Offering was playing at Tuska Festival, I immediately felt very frustrated that I wasn’t in the country at the moment. So when I discovered they were scheduled to play at Nosturi on 1 October, I immediately knew that I had to be part of it, as the band has been around since 2009 but never had the time to tour. This would be their fifth gig in total of which two have been held in Japan.

The support act was Crimson Sun, a female-fronted melodic metal band from Kotka. They released their debut album “Towards The Light” in 2015. I have seen their name popping up a few times, but only started to listen to the album a couple of weeks ago. When the set begun I noticed I was having technical issues with my camera, but after one minute of being unfocused during the first song of their set “Storm”, I already seemed to have forgotten about that. The song is a great opener both on their album and in gigs, cause it sets immediately a great and promising atmosphere especially by Sini Seppälä’s strong voice and energetic attitude. The band has an even heavier sound than on their album.

The band played about half an hour and the set consisted of 6 songs (eg. Towards The light, The Spark and Awaken). Considering that the band members are around my age and the fact that they are very good players and know how to deliver a good performance, I would like to conclude that half an hour was way too short, they were a great support band for Cain’s Offering, I would definitely like to see them again and I know we will definitely hear great things from them in the future!

The rest of the night continued with the Finnish power metal gods of Cain’s Offering. Cain’s Offering has made me (and a legion of other fans) wait for about 7 years for a gig and they have not disappointed me at all. Let’s be honest here Timo Kotipelto, Jani Liimatainen, Jens Johansson, Jonas Kuhlberg and Jani Hurula combined in one band, is not only a good combination, but also a dreamteam. A mixture of Sonata Arctica and Stratovarius, with the best sides of both bands, makes the combination so interesting.

After the instrumental song “I am Legion”, the band started off with “Stormcrow” (which is the title track and opener of their 2015 release). The song immediately got my attention, and thus their concert started off with a bang. The show itself didn’t have much visual aspects to it, but in the same way this was kind of a relief, because sometimes too much visuals can be very distracting. The band had a lot of chemistry together and also with the audience. Sometimes the reaction of the audience can add something magical to a gig and this is what happened here. I could notice this especially in the constant singing along and shouting from the first minute. All of these guys are very professional in what they do, that’s why the sound was very much on point, everything seemed great, from vocals to guitar solos to keyboard solos. The songs sounded even better than the studio recordings. The setlist in general was a good mixture of the material of their two albums. Personal highlights of the evening were “More Than Friends”, “Constellation of Tears” and “Antemortem” but the most beautiful and endearing moment was when they played the first encore “My Selene”, a Sonata Arctica cover that Liimatainen wrote. You could tell by his excitement how much he appreciated it that he was able to play his song again. They ended the evening with “I Will Build You A Rome”.

Cain’s Offering must have enjoyed the evening as much as their fans did, hopefully this will inspire them to keep on touring. With a band like this, you never know if you will see them again or not, but if you ever get the chance to see them, I can only recommend you to go, I’m sure I will!