Blind Guardian
10th of September 2002
Nosturi Club, Helsinki Finland
By Arto Lehtinen and Marko
Syrjala
Though having incredible success in several European
countries, especially in Germany where the
“Tolkien” power metal heroes usually play in
front of several thousand people in metal
festivals - for example in Wacken of this year where
the whole battle field was entirely packed. It also seems they will have the first festival of their very
own in 2003 in Germany by the way …
For some bizarre and eccentric reason the
Tolkies’ metalizd fairy tellers have never ever
visited us here in Finland, obviously due to the
prejudiced presumption and afraid of getting a real
lame advance ticket sale as well as the lame response
from the audience or whatever. But
what the heck, the whole place was totally packed by young Tolkien metalheads whose average age was moving around
18 having crawled to testify the premier show of
Blind Guardian.
Fortunately there wasn’t any warm up band
booked to open the show, just Blind Guardian alone.
This was good news for the most of the people here
cause band played extra long set, more than two
hours.
Obviously the long and liquid containing boat trip
over the sea from Sweden must have consumed the Blind
Guardian dudes more or less because of suffering from
the unexpected tiredness seen from this gig
follower’s point of view. But to tell the truth,
Blind Guardian has always had quite an odd manner as
for paying attention to how they look on the stage. The stage set was very simple.
There were no special effects or bombs, unlike at Wacken where they definitely did a killer set and
the whole stage was literally on fire. In general,
today the band seemed not to be in the finest physical mode.
The set list of the night had brilliantly been
chosen to please the packed club, covering several
old tunes like “Imaginations From The Other
Side” and “Mourning Hall”, but of
course some of the newer tracks from the latest opus
“Night At The Opera” belonged to the set
for example “Punishment Divine” and
“The Soulforged”. The final track done in
the encore - “Mirror Mirror” - crowned the gig.
The more ballad songs, for instance “Bard
Song”, sounded definitely brilliant and an
excellent choice to calm the double bass beat. The sound
was overall very good and clear during the whole
concert
The band consisted of Hansi on vocals, guitarists Andre Olbrich
and Marcus Siephen and drummer Thomas Stauch who
returned into band after a short break caused by hand
injury. Also included were two guest musicians, a
bold headed bass player Olivier Holzwarth and
keyboardist Michael Schuren. Especially Olivier
looked quite strange on stage because of his outlook
compared the rest of the guys ...
Despite the band’s conscious
tiredness on the stage, but instead the enthusiastic
audience singing by heart all the Blind Guardian
tunes proved to the Blind Guardian guys that they
should have visited Finland a couple of years
earlier. It wouldn’t be any big surprise if
these guys were seen in Finland next summer …
!
The set list:
Into The Storm
Welcome To Dying
Nightfall
Requiem
Lord Of The Rings
Valhalla
The Soulforged
Mourning Hall
Mordred’s Song
Time Stands Still
Bright Eyes
Punishment Divine
Bard Song
Imagenations From The Other Side
Encore :
Lost
A Past And… (Acc.)
Mirror Mirror
Band Website: www.blind-guardian.de