Concert wise, February has been an excellent month, with Iced Earth, Dream Theater, Savatage, and last Saturday Within Temptation all touring Belgium, and with the recent single success of tonight's headliner in mind, it was no surprise that the gig was sold out.

The opening band, Oceans of Sadness, (who are Belgian btw) started at around 19:00, and did an okay job at warming up the crowd. Not being familiar with their material, I can't really give an impression of the set list, and overall, I found this gig a tad boring. The main problem was that the members of the band were very static and lacked a lot of onstage presence. To my surprise they were very well received though, especially in the front of the hall, but this could also have been because their performance was filmed (or because they probably brought their local fan club with them).
Next up was Tanzwut, which to my surprise weren't an electro_goth_dance band (yeah, you see even a Metal Temple editor doesn't know EVERYTHING), but would be best compared with In extremo. Again though, I can't say that I was overly impressed with what I saw, and after about 4 or 5 songs, we decided to leave the hall to get some much needed refreshments at the bar (the heat in the hall was terrible tonight). Not a bad band though, and I'm certain that I would've liked them a lot better if I were familiar with their material. They certainly got a decent reaction from the audience, and the bagpipes were of course, a nice gimmick.

After a rather nasty incident involving a fainting fellow metal head, probably due to the temperature (or too much beer), it was time for what would reveal itself to be tonight's highlight (and in my opinion, the secret headliner), namely Fintroll. With a replacement singer (Tommy Åberg from Bloodshed, Katla is currently being treated for cancer), this band came onstage and raised hell for 45 minutes with their energetic performance. It was quite astonishing to see how popular they actually have become, but every bit of applause that they got tonight was well deserved. Star of the show was the the new singer, although the rest of the band certainly put on a great show as well. Again, due to not being familiar with most of their material I can't really say which songs they exactly played, but let me say this, if this band manages to play anywhere near you, don't hesitate to go and see them, you won't be disappointed ! As for me, the first thing I did on monday was order their CD's, superb band.

Beautiful and majestic were only two words with which you could describe Sharon from Within Temptation. As soon as the curtains were pulled away she managed to literally draw all attention to herself, somewhat overshadowing the rest of the band. You just have to be amazed at how gracious she manages to move around in her dress, and still managing to both sing the songs perfectly as well as having a lot of contact with the audience. Another thing that amazed me, was how wild the crowd went during the entire gig, especially considering the enormous heat in this place (refreshments even were handed out during the show itself, something which i haven't seen before).
The band played an excellent set list, surprisingly playing quite a bit of older material (eg. Enter, Candles & The Dance) as well as nearly everything from Mother Earth, my personal highlights being Mother Earth, Caged & a beautiful acoustic version of The Never Ending story. One song was specially played and dedicated tonight to one of their fans wich recently passed away, namely Our Farewell. They closed off the evening with playing Ice queen a second time, which in my opinion wasn't really needed (but I seemed to be alone in this opinion, as the rest of the crowd went totally wild for the final time, while i couldn't even move my neck or arms anymore). This band certainly has everything to manage a breakthrough in the rest of Europe & even the world. Thumbs way up!!!