The Baseball court is located in the Olympic Complex that was obviously used during the Olympic Games in Athens 3 years ago. Unfortunately, some live performances are the only festivities held in these beautifully and adequately designed facilities that are left without the proper maintenance. Nevertheless, this place was chosen to house the first Gagarin Open Air festival that took place from the 5th to the 11th of July. The interesting days (Metal-wise) were the 8th and the 11th of July. The first date is the subject of this report, featuring three Greek bands - OPENED PARADISE, SON OF NOTHING and ROTTING CHRIST - plus TYPE O NEGATIVE and PARADISE LOST.

The Metal Temple crew arrived at the venue exactly at the opening doors time (17:00), as the festival flyer was saying, and realized that the doors would open at 19:00! Finally the doors opened at about 18:15 and welcomed some black dressed metalheads who were already frying under the hot Greek sun. The place is perfect for live gigs, with 4,000 seats and the arena that can host at least 2000 people. The first band that took over the stage was OPENED PARADISE, hailing from Greece. This band comes from the old school Gothic Metal territory with obvious influences from the scene's pioneers FIELDS OF THE NEPHILIM. Although the sunny weather did not help the gothic based tunes, the band manage to earn the warm applause of the small crowd. To outline the NEPHILIM influences the band performed a pretty good cover version of Chords Of Souls.

The next act, SON OF NOTHING, was meant to be the 'worst live band' that I ever watched! The four pieced Greek band performed some Noisecore tracks comprising down-tuned noisy guitar section and screaming vocals with absolutely no lyrics. The energetic singer ripped his lungs out with some annoying screams and growls and definitely did not manage to get the audience moving or at least interested. Fortunately their setlist did not last too long and they cleared the stage pretty quick for the long-time blacksters ROTTING CHRIST.

Sakis and Co. kicked in dynamically with Fifth Illusion, spreading waves of enthusiasm to the bigger and younger - by now - audience. The sound was pretty rough but this didn't hold the Greek fans to form the classic mosh-pits. Archon, King Of A Stellar War and, of course, the old time classic Non Serviam were some of the gig's highlights. The band was in top mood despite some minor problems in the drum kit and performed four tracks - Nemecic, Keravnos Kivernitos, Enuma Elish and Sign Of Prime Creation - from the latest and successful release Theogonia.

After the Black Metal assault by ROTTING CHRIST the stage became greener for the first TYPE O NEGATIVE appearance upon Greek soil. I was more than happy to see that there were many girls in the front lines who were anxious to see the 2-meters-tall frontman on stage. Pete Steele picked up his bass guitar at about 21:45 and performed his ton heavy riffs beside the rest of the band's members who obviously were enjoying every minute of the show. Hickey was very kinetic with his guitar the time when he was not singing his vocals parts. The setlist had the classics Christian Woman, Love You To Death and the groovy Black No.1. Josh Silver left his keyboard set and picked up the microphone and gave an almost Punk singing performance that was welcomed with some energetic mosh-pits. The sound was clear and loud enough to enjoy TYPE O NEGATIVE's relentless performance. Pete was in a high mood and was an impressive persona upon the stage who often brought to my mind Lemmy Kilmister from the almighty MOTORHEAD. Overall, TYPE O NEGATIVE gave a very good show for the very first time in Greece and promised that they will visit us again in the near future.

After a long delay the stage was prepared for PARADISE LOST, who have given several shows in our country. The first lines of the arena became almost crowded by the strong PARADISE LOST fan-base in Greece. The band entered the stage performing The Enemy from their latest release In Requiem and joined the voices of about 4,000 metalheads despite the low sound quality. Nick Holmes was static as always and was reading the lyrics from the recent songs while Gregory Mackintosh did an excellent work in the lead guitars. The band surprised everyone playing Gothic and Eternal from their prime doom_death second album even though Holmes sung them without the old-time growls. The dust covered the whole arena and breathing became impossible as soon as As I Die Embers Fire, The Last Time and Say Just Words were performed.

All in all, the Gagarin Open Air festival was pretty good organized in an almost ideal venue if only there was the dust. Let's hope that in the near future there will be another festival beside the Rockwave one.