| Therion | 013-Tilburg | Nov 25, 2001 |
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My Insanity My Insanity opened up today’s show, with not that many people present yet. The first thing that was noticable, was there that was no drummer present. My Insanity isn’t a drumless band, so the drumsound came from a tape. While the tape sound was mixed good with the live sound, it still looked stange. Throughout their 30-minute set, I felt something was missing. The vocal of the lead singer were quite monotoneous. Although the keyboard player sang a couple of times with some grunt vocals, it didn’t add the needed change and variety. Maybe they would have made a bigger impression if the entire band was present… Evergrey While the sound wasn’t the greatest, the music was quite good. The bad sound was annoying the guitarist a lot as he was trying to get a good sound throughout the 30 minutes they played. The keyboard player was on the background too much. He was hard to spot on stage and he was too low in the mix. Too bad, cause if you listened carefully you could hear him play some nice tunes. The strong vocals from Thomas Englund were also good live. A little bit held back though, maybe he should try to experiment with his voice a bit more. The heavy setlist was well received by the crowd that was growing fast. They already seemed to have a fair amount of fans, which was cool to see. Evergrey definitely got potential! Therion Somewhat surprisingly was that they didn’t play that many songs of ‘Secret of the Runes’. They played songs from all of their albums, which led into an amazing and surprising setlist. Opening song was the heavy ‘Ginnungagap’ and it made things going right away. Nice lightshow and stage setup. The 6 headed choir was divided in the three males that stood on the right side of the drumkit and the three females that stood on the left side. The flaming torches next to the choir gave it all an even more gothic look, pretty cool. Following ‘Ginnungagap’ was the fast paced ‘Invocation of Naamah’ from the ‘Theli’ album. There was no break between these songs, they followed eachother nicely. What a great way to start a concert! After this it was finally time for a short break, with Therion already getting a thunderous applause. The old ‘Lepaca Kliffoth’ album from 1996 was also used when they played ‘Riders of Theli’ after the first two songs. ‘Birth of Venus Illegitima’ was next from the ‘Vovin’ record. Four songs from four different albums already, what’s next? Well, what about an excellent medley of the very first Therion albums, when they were still a black metal band? Johnsson himself had the lead vocals for the biggest part here, it was nice to see him sing as well, instead of only playing the guitar. While his voice is nothing spectacular, his vocals sounded great, just like on the albums. Other songs included ‘Enter Vril-Ya’, ‘Flesh of the Gods’, ‘Asgard’, ‘The Rise of Sodom and Gomorrah’, ‘Wings of Hydra’ and three covers. One of those covers was ‘Summernight City’ by ABBA, a bonus track on the newest Therion album. It was pretty cool and funny at the same time to see so many metalheads go crazy with an ABBA cover. Another one was the last encore of the show; ‘Balls to the Walls’ by Accept. This song was very easy to sing along with and it was a great idea to play this one at the end to get the crowd involved. And some of the crowd really did get involved with the music. As the choir left, they got 7 people out of the crowd and placed them behind the mics of where the choir stood. The only remaining guy from the choir did the leads on this song (and a few others). It was definitely fun! I mentioned that ‘Balls to the Walls’ was the second encore. That means there has to be a first encore. And that was their classic ‘To Mega Therion’. When the intro tape started of ‘Preludium’, everyone knew that this song was going to be performed and it was performed flawless. It’s really a shame this band can’t perform with a full orchestra, it’s impossible to pay for it. Although the sound was very bombastic and powerful, I can only imagine what they would sound like when they are ‘complete’. The tape that played the classical arrangments was mixed in perfectly with the real sound, so no complaints there. Since they played so many old songs, the tape wasn’t used that much anyway. Johnsson mentioned during the show that Therion’s first tour started here in The Netherlands, back in 1992. Therion has had quite a few lineup changes in the meantime, but it was clear that they have matured a lot and that they are definitely a band now. I hope they’re going to keep this lineup and I wonder already what they have in mind for the next album, which will unfortunately take a while…
(Review: Frank Alders |
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© Rockezine.com Nov 25, 2001, viewed 875 times since 666
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