13th of April, 2014
Melkweg, Amsterdam (NL)

By Michael
Before I start this concert review, I must say that I cheated a bit. As some of you know, Sonata Artcica is my favourite band. So when I heard they were coming to The Netherlands again, I just had to make sure that I would attend both concerts. Thus, I did. Before the show in Amsterdam, I went to the show in Eindhoven as well!

While the people were still entering the venue, the first band of the evening started playing. Trick and Treat were about to warm up the audience for main act, Sonata Arctica. They have just released a new album, and this show was to promote that record. Trick or Treat is an Italian power metal band, kind of similar to the likes of Helloween and Rhapsody. The latter is not so strange, because lead singer Alessandro Conti is also the lead singer of Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody.

This band is one that seems to have a lot of fun on stage. In the beginning they seemed to have a bit of a hard time getting the crowd to participate, yet as the evening progressed, this got better and better. The song that mainly broke the ice, was their cover of Cindy Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. Also a fun thing to see was that bass player Leone Villani Conti played with a camera on his bass. I wonder what kind of images came from that. During the last song, “Like Donald Duck”, some attributes were brought on stage, like an inflatable guitar and a very big glove. This shows that the band can surely entertain the crowd and does not take themselves too seriously.

Experimenting
Sonata Arctica seems to have been experimenting a bit. After “Stones Grow Her Name”, what they call their hard rock album, they said to return to the power metal days with “Pariah’s Child”. This also brought back their old logo and it was a great opportunity for a new tour. Just before this, they had a small tour, celebrating their 15th anniversary and the coming shows would be a mixture of old and new songs.

Just to say, the mixture of old and new songs was perfect. There were some people there who only knew the new album, and they may have been surprised by the power of the older songs, but had fun nonetheless. Jumping from a very old song, on to a new song, it was great to see how all the songs blended together. When you listen to the albums seperately, there are some big differences, yet on stage everything seems to blend really great.

Also, Sonata Arctica made sure that the setlist for every show was changed a bit. So instead of “In the Dark” (which almost brought tears to my eyes) and “Victoria’s Secret”, “Sing in Silence” and “Paid in Full” were played. Even though I loved hearing “In the Dark” in Eindhoven, the other two songs were absolutely amazing to hear! “Sing in Silence” gave me goosebumps, just as the howling of the wolf did, at the intro of “Blood”, one of my favourite songs of the new album. However, the best experience of the evening was hearing a song I never heard live before. “White Pearl, Black Oceans” is such an amazing song, and to hear it performed life in front of me was a fantastic experience.

The night came to an end after an encore of three songs, ending with “Don’t Say a Word”, the perfect ending of a good evening. To me, this was one of the best performances from Sonata Artcica. The band played great, Pasi, the new bass player seems to enjoy the shows and interacts a lot with the audience and the whole atmosphere during the whole evening was amazing.

Awesome Flickr Gallery Error - Invalid API Key (Key has invalid format)

Setlist Trick or Treat:
1. Evil Needs Candy Too
2. Time for Us All
3. Loser Song
4. Girls Just Want to Have Fun
(Cyndi Lauper cover)
5. Paper Dragon
6. Like Donald Duck

Setlist Sonata Arctica:
Intro
1. The Wolves Die Young
2. Losing My Insanity
3. My Land
4. Half a Marathon Man
5. Sing in Silence
6. Paid in Full
7. Blood
8. FullMoon
9. Tallulah
10. White Pearl, Black Oceans…
11. Kingdom for a Heart
(abridged)
12. Wolf & Raven
13. I Have a Right
Encore:
14. Cloud Factory
15. San Sebastian
16. Don’t Say a Word
(with Vodka outro)