- Posted By: Dark Emperor
- Comments: 0
Note: This is part of the Tuska Open Air - March 2009 Feature, so you can read the whole thing here
This one was a really hard decision to make, since Swallow the Sun was playing at Tavastia that night. I influenced my decision based on the fact that Swallow The Sun had already toured the US and they are more likely to tour again (and I was right!) than having a tour involving Amoral, Battlelore, and Morian.
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We had no clue on how to get to Nosturi, so we took our little map / band schedule and we started walking in that direction. While Helsinki’s downtown is not too big, it’s quite a walk from the train station to this club, and afterwards we discovered you could take a tram there. So we found the club and got in line outside and at the specified time the doors were open and we made our way inside. First up was Morian, they started playing as people were arriving to the club, so they did not had much of an audience, but it was not a problem: like any professional band would do, they just kept playing like if they had the place packed. Their gothic rock/metal music was a nice change from the Tuska bands during the day. The acoustics of this place are awesome, in my opinion, and they have a full sized mixing board as well as a sound engineer (some bands have their own, other use the one from the club) The bands live sound was pretty close to their albums and their performance was pretty good. |
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Morian
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Battlelore
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The second band was the one we wanted to see the most – Battlelore. They took the stage with great confidence and with all their costumes and props. Their musical blend of gothic, folk, power and death metal makes them a band with a great Tolkien-inspired concept and music. You can clearly see that this band has been playing together for quite a while and that energy and professionalism are highly noticeable on stage, since all the members have fun on stage and perform perfectly their songs. Their medieval outfits and face paint just makes the show more pleasant and engaging. Song after song, their live performance was one of my favorite of all time, since their stage presence was great, their sound was crystal clear and almost identical to their studio sound. At the same time, they were interacting with the crowd as much as they could. This was the high point of the night for me.
To close the show was Amoral. While I’ve heard their albums before, I was never really a big fan of the band. To me, they sound like another Children Of Bodom and that’s it. In their live performance, their sound was amazingly clear and perfectly mixed. They also used stage props like small fireworks and some fans blowing in their face, making their hair fly away like in a music video. While I think this was a nice touch to their performance, for me it seemed like showing off since I don’t see the point of it. Their music, however, was very good, and they are a worthy Children Of Bodom clone, their guitar players and drummer contribute highly to this. The vocals on the other side were pretty standard for bands that have a similar style, and his stage antics seemed a bit old in my opinion.
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| Amoral | Ticket for the event |
Overall, this club show was pretty good and all the bands had a great sound (which is highly important for me) and their performances were top notch. We made our way back to our hotel around 2:30-3 am, dead tired of our first Tuska day.
