Battle Beast + Delain (+ Sabaton)
Battle Beast + Delain (+ Sabaton)
@ Melkweg Amsterdam (Netherlands)
February 2015
Some say a Sunday is not the right time for a big gig. The show in de Melkweg in Amsterdam proved that that is not correct. When arriving for the Heroes on Tour Europe 2015 of Sabaton (Sweden) with special guests Delain (Netherlands) and Battle Beast (Finland) I was happy that I get a quick pass through instead of having to wait in the enormous queue until Leidse Plein (passing the camouflaged tour bus). Doors opened at 6:30PM and there was loud cheering from the first people entering the venue. They still had to wait until 7:30PM for the first activity on stage but that didn’t matter. The sold-out house made up for a big party.
It was the last gig of the tour and that brings always something additional. Although it seems that it’s distracting from the music, it brings also on stage the experience of the bands during the tour. It’s a mix of celebrating the last gig together and the idea that they can go home. When the atmosphere on the tour was great, it immediately reflects in fun and hilarious things on stage. An “inside party” with audience. And what a party it became.
The focus of the report will be on the support bands as they fit the scope of Sonic Cathedral.
The evening opened with Battle Beast. After a dramatic intro the band entered stage with war helmets and it is immediately clear that this evening is going to be not that serious. And then the singer Noora Louhimo shows up. She seems to have walked away from the 1980s; a leather jacket and aviators, an appearance that immediately made the temperature rise. Although at the end of the tour, no sign of tiredness with the band and no overload for the vocals. For sure most fans in the audience came for Sabaton but Battle Beast found a way to attract them too. It’s too easy to say that Battle Beast is Sabaton with a female singer. However that doesn’t value the quality of this band. Noora has an incredible voice, she shouts, roars and also the high notes come up like it's no effort. The lead guitarist Juuso Soinio is probably champion Guitar Hero on all parties. At one point, there are a few technical glitches, the band improvises a little on “Highway To Hell” and “Another One Bites The Dust”.
Between the songs there were lots of jokes and quips, between the bands, crew and with the audience. When Battle Beast played at some point two thick male with fluorescent mankini's ran over the stage leaving the band and audience a little bit surprised. In the next song Merel Bechtold, guitarist of Delain, came on stage dressed as a monkey. Merry began to throw bananas to the audience and started to feed the band members.
With all this you almost forget that it’s a gig, not a comedy. Nevertheless the fun, the band delivered a strong set with songs from the new album (*) and the 30 minutes were over in no time.
Line-up: Noora Louhimo (vocals), Pyry Vikki (drums), Juuso Soinio (guitar), Eero Sipilä (bass, vocals), Janne Björkroth (keys, vocals)
Set list:
Far Far Away (*)
Black Ninja,
Touch in the Night (*)
Madness (*)
Iron Hand
Out of Control
It could be a challenge to exceed Battle Beast as second support. The music of Delain is different, less brutal and has less power. Their style is still heavy but a little more polished. And nothing wrong with that. Delain has become a well-positioned player within the circuit with a frontwoman Charlotte Wessels, who clearly knows what she is doing. Also their show was excellent and the extended line-up with Merel Bechtold helped in that. Another difficulty was that most space on stage was filled with something under clothes. It hard for a dynamic band with a large line-up to move in the limited space.
Of course there were also in this show some in the meantime to be expected hilarious moments with (again) the two buddy’s in mankini’s that (pleasantly? ) surprised Charlotte. During the show Chris Rörland (Sabaton) “replaced” Timo Somers for a minute and also Noora appeared on stage with a war helmet on. Fun all over the place.
The final joke didn’t work out as intended. At the end of the set two buckets of something was thrown over the band. In itself fun but it took quite a will to clean up the stage because the substance made it very slippery.
Although the show was short Delain performed as enthusiastically as usual. Despite the Sabaton fans maybe seeing Delain as a little bit soft, the energetic stage performance and the clearly present musical quality meant that they responded positively to the gig.
Line-up: Charlotte Wessels (vocals), Martijn Westerholt (keys), Otto Schimmelpenninck van der Oije (bass), Ruben Israel (drums), Timo Somers (guitar) and Merel Bechtold (guitar).
Set list:
Mother Machine
Get the Devil Out of Me
Army of Dolls
Go Away
Pristine
Sleepwalkers Dream
Here Got The Vultures
Not Enough
We Are the Others.
The main act was of course Sabaton. With some delay because of the cleaning the band appeared on stage. The clothes were removed and revealed a big tank (matching the wars and battles in the songs) on which the drummer Hannes Van Dahl was positioned. The show was energetic with an enormous interaction with the audience. Just like in the support acts a lot of things happened that had nothing to do with the music. Hilarious was singer Joakim Brodén with the pink Hello Kitty glasses and pink boa thrown on stage. An incident with Joakim’s pants at Poppodium 013 earlier in the tour made the audience to sing “Broek uit, op je hoofd! Broek uit, op je hoofd!” (in English: “Pants off, on your head”). At the encore Joakim really took off his pants. Merel participated in the fun by crowd surfing in her monkey suit.
With all this funny action you would almost forget the musical part of the show. The fans (quite a few dressed up in military suits) got the party they wanted, the songs were performed with great enthusiasm and quality.
Set list:
Ghost Division
To Hell and Back
Carolus Rex
The Carolean’s Prayer (in Swedish)
Gott Mit Uns (in Swedish)
40:1
7734
Resist and Bite
Far from the Fame
Swedish Pagans
Uprising
Night Witches
Primo Victoria
Metal Crüe.
Although the combination of bands seems not to be a good match it worked out fine. And if you like also a comedy-train on stage, try to go to the last gig of a tour. It adds a lot more to a show. With bands of this levels you don’t need to worry that the musical part will suffer from that. All-in all this was a great, mad but powerful party.
