The Post-Apocalypse (APOst)
Review of Apocalyptica concert in Tilburg (by Regje)
31 March 2005
At 6 pm Cindy and William picked me up and off we went to Tilburg (with a little stop at McDonalds, ‘cause I had to eat something). Traffic was ok and at 19:30 we were already at 013. The doors wouldn't open till 20:00, so we had to wait. Funny thing is, we stood at the same spot as were I was waiting for the doors to open at The Rasmus gig. Only that was already at 14:00 or so….
20:00 Once we got in, we headed for the balcony straight away and to the toilet. We took our spots on the balcony: to the front in the middle, so we had a good view on the stage and we also could oversee the whole crowd below us.
21:00 The support act was Angelzoom: female singer, violin, cello, keyboard and some samples. It started out ok, but after a few minutes it was already enough. All the songs sounded alike and it was kinda boring. Only the last song, her single, was a bit more up-tempo and ok to listen to. The singer needs to lose the high notes by the way.
21:45 APOCALYPTICA! They each had a chair with in the back skulls carved. It looked really cool (even though skulls aren't really my thing). It kinda looked like they were sitting on a throne. The drumset was put up really nice too. The weren't any tomtoms above the bassdrum, so you could really have a good look at the drummer (who was kinda cute).
Sadly Perttu had the flu, so he couldn't be there. A former Apocalyptica member took his place: Antero. Mikko Siren played the drums. Mikko was nice to look at. He plays really energetic and he sometimes stands playing and does little tricks with his drumsticks. At the end he even stood on his bassdrum!
From our spot we had the best view (maybe not really close by, but we could see everything). It was also nice to see the audience: banging heads with hair bouncing around, arms in the air and at moments a moshpit (glad I wasn't in there).
They played really well and Eicca had a microphone and said something to the crowd between songs. I didn't expect him to have such a beautiful low voice. He looks a bit feminine in pictures, but he so totally rocks on stage! He is really good at playing with the crowd. If they wanted response from the audience all they had to do was clap once and the entire crowd participated, when they wanted the crowd to cheer all they had to do was ask and they were happy to do so. That was so awesome.
Eicca and Mikko were the onces that really were making some movement on stage (Eicca head banging and Mikko, well, he is just energy all over). But at the end Eicca got up from his chair and started playing standing up and head banging (how does he do that??). Also Paavo got up and finally Antero also. That looked kinda funny, because Eicca and Paavo were really giving it everything and they stood there really rocking their chellos and Antero stood there really stiff, hahaha. That's one of the moments I really missed Perttu. At some point Eicca was even playing the cello on his knees with the cello on the ground. When they were standing, walking around and even jumping around, they really had the crowd going as well: singing along and jumping and clapping.
At the end they bowed and were hugging each other (well just shaking Antero's hand, hahaha) and the crowd was so hard clapping and shouting when they were gone they came back on stage once more. They started shaking hands at the front row (damn, I wasn't there) and handing out drumsticks and setlists. The audience applauded so well. It was so amazing to see all hands in the air and the noise. WOW! If you get such an applaud, you know you did something good!
I really enjoyed myself! Some of my favourites were Life burns (they even mentioned Lauri and I had my little fangirl moment, hahaha) and Enter sandman. I really didn't know they were this good, so after the gig I bought myself an Apocalyptica shirt and I'm so proud to wear it.
The sound was great, the light was great, the guys played really well, the audience was great. Just a shame Perttu was ill (I hope he got better soon) and the smoke machine made noise. This was really the best live show I ever went to!!! Apocalyptica so rocks!