26-02-2009 Tiamat

Supports: Ava Inferi, The 69 Eyes; Venue:  Batschkapp, Frankfurt (Germany)
By: Nina Mende & Ann-Kristin Gebhardt

The Batschkapp wasn’t as crowded as expected, and the average age wasn’t as low as we expected. Actually six bands were originally planned to play tonight and to do this tour, only three did it in the end: Ava Inferni from Portugal, 69eyes from Finland and Tiamat from Sweden. A mix that’s somehow odd yet somehow fitting together. The light was quite dark and reddish combined with fog. No photopit and some hardcore fans claiming the edge of the stage made it hard to take pictures as well, so more time for enjoying the show itself.

The show began at 7:30pm, quite early but oh well. On stage came the four Portugese including a female singer in a dress. She sang quite high pitched and with a classic style, the music was just as slow and melodic. As an opening act who is supposed to warm up the people it was definitely the wrong band. The slow and calm music did calm everybody and many people went outside for a smoke or went to get drinks in order not to fall asleep. That doesn’t mean that the band was bad, no, only not very thriving and incentive. The singer was telling a short story to most of the songs, her motions during the songs were picturing the songs a little bit. Ava Inferni is an interesting band to watch and great music to calm down. They played for about 30 minutes.

Up next were the five Finns from Helsinki: The 69eyes. Many kids were cheering as Jyrki, Timo Timo, Jussi, Archie and Bazie entered the stage at a little after 8:30pm. With “Framed in Blood” they began rocking the stage. The audience sang and danced along and enjoyed the music big time. Many fans wore merchandise or were wearing make-up to look like a Gothic Girl and screamed in a high pitched tone as Jyrki sang it to each and every Gothic Girl in the room, so he said at least. Since the Helsinki Vampires did not have anything new released everybody knew every song by heart. Jyrki spun around in a circle on stage, jumping with the microphone stand like a witch on the broom while the others rocked on their instruments. Jussi drummed as passionate as usual behind his drum set, spit out his drinks and looked sexy for the fans. Jyrki wore sunglasses, so did Timo (guitar).

Here is what the 69eyes played: Framed In Blood Never Say Die Gothic Girl Rocker Christina Death From Dusk Till Dawn Stolen Season Feel Berlin Stigmata Dance D’Amour Brandon Lee Perfect Skin DevilsAnd as encore: Lost Boys L.A. Woman

The last band this evening was Tiamat. The four guys from Sweden managed to do the same great job on the crowd as the 69 Eyes had done before. Tiamat is since the year 1989 one of the greatest metal- bands known in scene. Now they are back on tour in Europe, the first time in long years. In my opinion they have never lost the unique atmosphere they owned from the first time I heard them playing and I was really lucky to see them live onstage. They really did lots of changes during their career time, changed even their style time and time again, but important, they never lost themselves, became commercial or even boring. John Edlund (vocals, guitars, keyboard), Anders Iwers (Bass), Lars Sköld (Drums) and Thomas Wyreson (Guitars) had an easy game to get the crowd in the right mood so from the first song there was singing, banging and screaming all around. It was a real party going on and Tiamat seemed to shower in this atmosphere. John’s voice rushed goosebumps over my skin and his acting and interaction with the band was perfect therefore that it was, as usual for Tiamat, more decent than insincere and enforced. The light onstage changed between white, blue, yellow and blood red and fit extremely well to the atmosphere of the songs, so it was a great show to watch and to listen too. Especially as they plaid “Cain”, their 2003 song of the album prey, the hall seemed to seethe. The only little annoying thing was the foggy atmosphere onstage which made it some times difficult to get a clear view of the faces. Tiamat played only about one hour which was pretty short. I could have listened to them much longer.

Links:
Ava Inferi Official
The 69 Eyes Official
The 69 Eyes MySpace
Tiamat MySpace