14-11-2011 Insomnium

Supports: Before The Dawn, myGRAIN; Venue: Baroeg, Rotterdam (Netherlands)
By: Sabine van Gameren

Three Finnish band on the road, touring together. First stop: Rotterdam (Netherlands).

No matter that it’s Monday, Baroeg was filled. Filled with a lot of guys in Insomnium tshirts. The headliner of the night surely got its fans out here but the other bands were welcomed greatly as well. Mygrain was first and for many people still unknown.
The band started in 2004 and makes Melodic Death Metal. This year the band released a self-titled full length album which is the third one of their hands. The band has its strongest point in the guitars who have the melodic part, but bring in the heaviness as well. In only 30 minutes they managed to convince loads of the audience in here. From the great unknown, to the big winners of the night.

Before The Dawn was the second band this evening and while Tuomas Saukkonen, the big name behind this band, most recently released an album with his other project Black Sun Aeon it is now Before The Dawn that hits the stage. Earlier this year they released the album “Deathstar Rising” and although many may have suspected this show was in full support of that album it turned out to be different. Surprise, surprise. The band was going to play some songs from the upcoming album and Tuomas speaks the words that the Dutch are “the first ones to hear it live ever, tonight”. A kind request not to film it with any mobile devices for youtube is made and it seems like the audience lived up to that request. From these new songs played, the last one was the one that made the most impact, but all of them seem to hit ground tonight. An interesting show for the fans and gave a little sneak preview of what to expect next.

Insomnium got on stage and they hardly had to put an effort in winning the hearts of the audience as they clearly had these already. Nevertheless the band seemed surprise to see how many people showed up on a Monday evening to see them. Insomnium released their album “One For Sorrow”( https://tempelores.com/?p=5385) recently and they obviously played quite some songs from that release. What is to notice when you have seen the band before is that they were quite relaxed on the stage, seems like they felt very comfortable here and even though the last time this band played in this venue they had keyboards in their live set, tonight it was just the four of them that made it work. To be honest, it is not that much of a miss as the rest of the band fill the stage as well. Now you had some more attention for Ville Vänni’s guitars and putting some extra stress on what he does makes you appreciate the band even more. As said before, hardly any new hearts won tonight as the most of them clearly were into this band already, but a memorable show it was anyway.