29-10-2008 Epica

Supports: Amberian Dawn; Venue: Colo-Saal, Aschaffenburg (Germany)
By: Ann- Kristin Gebhardt
 

The concert this evening began with Amberian Dawn, a new Finnish metal band. The band consists of six members, Tuomas Seppälä (keyboards), Heikki Saari (drums), Peter James Goodman (vocals), Tommi Kuri (bass) and Heidi Parviainen (vocals), and had their debut in 2006. Now there are touring with Epica and opened the first gig of their Europe tour. They had 45 minutes, which they used well to set the Colo-Saal audience on fire. Though nobody knew them, the band was completely accepted after their first song. Heidi sang perfectly emotive, interacting well with her band members and the whole band seemed to enjoy the performance immensely. The band was ambitious and all the members gave their best, while they presented songs from their old, as well as from their new album. After a few songs the band even answered questions from the people and implied everybody to their gig. They always spoke complimentary of the people listening, who really went along with the music. Though the band is young, all of their members have a long story of making music. Now together as Amberian Dawn they played an impressive metal concert. The songs had their own style, a little reminding of early Nightwish and had tricks and even jokes in them. I could have listened to them longer than the 45 minutes they had and I guess so could have the others.

After Amberian Dawn left the stage, we waited a few minutes until Epica came to rock us at their first evening of their 2008 Europe tour. The light the stage was bathed in was kind of orangeish, but not in an annoying way, as the band entered. Simone Simons, singer, seemed to be in a perfect mood as they began. The sound was great, absolutely breathtaking and emotional. Also Mark Jansen, guitars and vocals, made a perfect debut. The band interacted well with each other from the start, came together in groups, joked, headbanged and even jumped around onstage. They were ambitious and grateful. The rhythms were strong and hard as well as emotional and soft and they fit perfectly with Simone’s voice. One of the best moments during the gig was Simones and Coen Janssen song Solitary Ground. It was performed extremely emotionally, Simone’s voice was great and the sound of the piano completed it perfectly. They presented songs of their last albums, as well as songs of their new one, which will be coming out this month. The new songs are not very different from the old ones; the band hasn’t changed their individual style which, for me, is great. People all around were head banging, screaming and simply enjoying the gig, which was definitely great. Ad Sluijter (guitar), Yves Huts (bass) and Ariën van Weesenbeek(drums) were in perfect forms as well. The band, same as Amberian Dawn before, talked to the audience, answered questions and made people perform with them. The mood was great during the whole gig and it was sad when the time was up. After they left, there was still screaming and clapping and so the band returned and played three more songs.

Links:
Amberian Dawn MySpace
Amberian Dawn Official
Epica MySpace
Epica Official