[Harry] Even though I saw AMORPHIS live last year, I was really anxious to watch them once more live in Greece. I arrived at Gagarin 205 half an hour before the starting time and waited for DimitrisK to come and go inside. After entering the venue the first thing that someone could see, was that it was half empty. Probably many AMORPHIS fans decided to stay at home and come later on. But as things turned out it was their loss since they missed two very good bands.

[DimitrisK] This is one of the rare occasions when the organization of a gig in Greece goes as planned. Fifteen minutes after the METAL TEMPLE crew had entered the venue AMORAL showed up on-stage. Their really young looks was not of a great surprise since in Finland kids get exposed to music from the first days in school something in Greece is not happening (and we are still saying that we create culture). Nevertheless, I was already familiar to AMORAL's sound having listened a decent number of times their latest album Show Your Colors.

Despite the lukewarm welcome by the indiferenct audience the Finnish band played with great enthusiasm and impressive professionalism. They 'filled' the stage and after a while they did manage to warm us up. Of course, the latest album has the lion's share so we got Gave Up Easy where we enjoyed the excellent twin guitars that I strongly believe have strong Hard Rock roots. AMORAL looked in a great mood and songs like Song For The Stubborn and my personal favorite Year Of The Suckerpunch made me once again doubt their age that is not in consistency with the on-stage attitude. The only complaint I can make is the non-uniform setlist where the older and Death Metal-esque tracks like Pusher sounded like cover versions. It is very hard to support music belonging to different genres but at least were well performed. The band did a new song called something like Hang 'em High that sounded something like in between the band's present and past music identity.

After the very good performance by AMORAL the crew prepared everything in less than 20 minutes getting BEFORE THE DAWN on-stage right on schedule. I was not aware of BEFORE THE DAWN's music and in fact I was kind of prejudiced having heard the term 'gothic' in their bio. Fortunately, this was not a boring gothic rock_metal band but an almost melodic Death Metal in the Finnish way that has many SENTENCED finishing touches. The first song they did was Disappear and it became obvious that BEFORE THE DAWN had many fans among the AMORPHIS oriented audience. The band looked and sounded solid as hell despite the fact that generally there was not a lot of movement on-stage. Maybe the dual vocals have something to do but compared to AMORAL BEFORE THE DAWN seemed to me a little bit dry on energy. Dying Sun was definitely on the highlights list while In My Room surprised us with an impressive atmosphere as performed and sung by the bassist and rhythm guitarist.

So, two supporting bands and two very good performances make an excellent intro. The mood was more than high and the audience was warm enough welcome the headliners so off to Harry...

BEFORE THE DAWN setlist:

01. Disappear
02. Faithless
03. Dying Sun
04. Unbreakable
05. Exile
06. Monsters
07. Morning Sun
08. Scar
09. My Darkness
10. My Room
11. The Black
12. Deadsong

[Harry]So, it was time for the headliners to hit the stage. AMORPHIS were warmly welcomed with applauses by the pretty filled up venue. I even met two girls from Finland in the front row! They hit the stage playing two songs from their latest album; I have to admit that Skyforger is not one of my favorite albums and in fact I believe is one of the weakest ones, but the majority didn't share the same opinion with me. The sound, even after I have left the photo pit, was not that good. The keyboards were in front and at some points the voice of Tomi was buried. And not to mentioned that the volume was not that loud. Things got a bit better as time passed but some problems were present all the time. On the other hand, friends that were in front told me that the sound was very good.

Towards and Against was next. The band was in great shape and Tomi Joutsen can definitely fill a scene by himself! Headbanging all the time and with a good communication with the fans, gave a great show. The problems with Tomi Koivusaari's guitar pedals during the first four songs saw Joutsen telling jokes and in particular he said that it would be better if he'd play SLAYER and in response Jan Rechberger threw SLAYER riff. Anyway, after that small humorous incident, they continued without any other problems onstage, they continued with one of my favorite songs, The Castaway. The only thing I didn't like was that many younger fans of AMORPHIS didn't know_like the older songs. That's a pity since albums like Tales From A Thousand Lakes wrote a great part of AMORPHIS' history. Of course most of the songs were from their latest album due to promotional issues, but the big surprise for me was during the encore when they played Sign From the North Side from The Karelian Isthmus, despite the average sound.

[Harry] About twenty minutes before midnight, AMORPHIS left the stage and most of the fans satisfied. Overall it was a good gig, with three very good bands and if the sound was better when AMORPHIS played, we would talk about a great live show! Hopefully we will see more billings like this one and with this ticket prize in Athens.

01. Silver Bride
02. Sampo
03. Towards And Against
04. The Castaway
05. The Smoke
06. Majestic Beast
07. Alone
08. Silent Waters
09. Medley: Against Widows/ Cares / On Rich And Poor / Against Widows/ Better Unborn
10. From The Heaven Of My Heart
11. Sky Is Mine
12. Black Winter Day
Encore
13. Sign From the North Side
14. House Of Sleep
15. My Kantele

(photos by Harry Simpson )

AMORAL

BEFORE THE DAWN

AMORPHIS