Concerts I've seen

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

No support for this one, just Yngwie. I'd pretty much given up on seeing him live again, as I'd felt the quality of his live shows hadn't been what it once was. But the presence of former Judas Priest and Iced Earth vocalist Ripper Owens persuaded me it might be worth giving him another shot. Sadly, I think I should have stuck to my guns. The sound was horribly muddy, and the whole thing just seemed to be going through the motions, rather than doing it with any real passion. "Gates of Babylon", "Rising force", "You don't remember" and "Dreaming" were all OK. But ultimately, the evening wasn't a success for me. At the end of the show, Yngwie brought out Jim Marshall on stage.

This was my first show at Twickenham, and given the dearth of public transport options, I'd decided to go in on the bike. That turned out to be a great move, as I could ride right up to the stadium, and park in the bike park nestling in its shadow. I'd been let down twice for this show, and so had a spare ticket to try and sell. But sadly, none of the touts were remotely interested in buying anything other than standing tickets. I had seating tickets, and from the seating plan, it looked like I'd be in a reasonable position. Sadly not. The stage was much further forward than it was on the plan, and so I was nearly sideways on to the stage, and couldn't see any of the backdrops. A flying speaker rig was hanging in front of the video screen, too, so I was going to have a very limited view for this show.

I'd arrived too late to see Lauren Harris. Within Temptation suffered from poor sound, something that would hamper all three bands that I saw. I know stadium shows are never great on that front, but even by those standards, it wasn't great. "Mother earth" and "Ice queen" were both pretty good, but overall, they've been much better in the past. Next up were Avenged Sevenfold. Close but no cigar. They had the twin guitars, but didn't seem to make use of them. There was none of the guitar harmonies that the thousands of Maiden fans present would have lapped up, and the band just came across as being bland and average. On to Maiden, then. Despite some great studio albums, I've never found them to be a particularly good live band, and after the horrors of their last Earls Court show, their set lists are just too variable to be worth taking a chance on. However, this time they were playing a selection of songs from the '80s, which sounded like a winner to me. But the combination of the limited view and the poor sound meant that it really wasn't doing much for me. Sure, there were highlights like "Rime of the ancient mariner" (which apparently had an impressive backdrop, but I couldn't see it from my seat), "Fear of the dark" (the only post-'80s track they played) and "Moonchild". But mostly a disappointing show. I suspect this was my last Maiden show.

No support for this one. Just Queensrÿche bringing their full stage show over to the UK, and performing "Operation:Mindcrime" 1 and 2. We were sold that before their last show, but they only played selected tracks from the albums then. This time, they did indeed play both albums in their entirety. So what is there to say? Mindcrime is one of the greatest albums of all time. They could do little wrong on that score. Geoff Tate was this time playing the parts of both Nicky and Dr. X at various points throughout the set. Mike Stone was wearing a black face mask of the type worn by protesters at public events. The highlights for me were "Speak" and "The needle lies", but that's not to say it was perfect. I felt that "Anarchy-X" was a bit lacking in intensity, and the change from soft to aggressive in "My empty room" was botched and lost much of the impact that is has on the album. But those are naturally minor gripes.

So on to the second album. They are always going to struggle when doing a show like this. The second album simply doesn't stand up to the quality of the first, and the crowd was noticably more subdued for it. There were certainly some well performed songs like "I'm American". But overall, the second half of the set was always going to be disappointing when compared to the first, and so proved here. The encore, on the other hand, unexpectedly turned out to be my highlight of the evening, seeing "Best I can", "Jet city woman" and "Empire", all of which were outstanding.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Pain were something of a surprise. I'd heard a few tracks, and thought they were pretty reasonable. But I was completely unprepared for just how good they'd be live. Opening up with a solid slab of industrial metal in the form of "Same old song", they followed that up with an outstandingly heavy cover of "Eleanor Rigby", For some reason, the crowd seemed somewhat indifferent, but to my ears, they sounded great, and I'll definitely try and see them again the next time they play in these parts.

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from Nightwish. While I hadn't got the new album yet, I'd heard a few tracks from it, and I wasn't 100% convinced that Anette was going to be a suitable replacement for Tarja. In truth, though, she did a pretty reasonable job with the older material. The problem for me was there there wasn't enough of it. The set list was heavily biased towards the "Dark passion play" material, and perhaps in part simply because I'm not familiar with it, it just didn't work for me. Anette was interacting well with the crowd, and looked more comfortable with the rest of the band than Tarja ever did, but the magic was gone. There were certainly highlights, such as opener "Bye bye beautiful", and encore performances of "Wishmaster" and "Wish I had an angel". "Wishmaster" in particular saw the front row holding up the "Hamster", "A dentist" and so on misheard lyrics cards, which amused the band. But it wasn't enough, and sadly, I think this was the worst Nightwish performance I've seen.

Axxis were pretty decent the last time I'd seen them, so I was hopeful for more of the same. Once again, they put on a decent show, but perhaps not quite as strong as before. This time, they had Ana Mladinovici from Magica adding some female vocals, which seemed to work well. Lead singer Bernhard Weiß had plenty of... unconventional movement on stage. Dave Ling described it as "embarassing dad dancing", which is pretty apt. A reasonable set, but nothing outstanding.

Gamma Ray had put on some stunning shows in the past, so I was hoping for good things. Sadly, this wasn't to be one of them. I had no complaints about the setlist, but from my position at the front, I simply couldn't hear Kai's vocals, and the whole sound overall was muddy. That's not to say there weren't highlights -- "New world order" and "Valley of the kings" were both good, and the inclusion of "Ride the sky" before the obligatory "Somewhere out in space" was a nice touch. But they've definitely been better in the past.

As for Helloween? They've been living on past glories for a while now, but with each album and each live tour, they've done just enough to stay relevant in my eyes. Although I hadn't heard it before the show, I'd heard from others that their new album was much stronger, and the tracks they played tonight seemed to bear that out. The stage was dressed as a near identical copy of the cover of that album. Unsurprisingly, the Kiske-era material went down best with the crowd, but "If I could fly" and "King for 1000 years" were both good. There was also a bizarre section where Dani's drum solo was interrupted by Deris, Gerstner and Grosskopf dressed as dwarves in a Punch and Judy style booth. They said he was all well and good, but he couldn't play music. He proceeded to prove them wrong by playing "Smoke on the water" on his drums, which triggered the three of them to do the same, with Deris singing though a squeaky voice effects box, until Weike returned to the stage with a toy machine gun, and shot them, allowing the drum solo to continue. Strange. That said, despite some high points, this was not an outstanding show by any means.

So with all three bands performing at levels below what I know they're capable of, it wasn't looking like a great evening. But the ending was to change all that. The first encore saw a medley consisting of "I can", "Where the rain grows", "Perfect gentleman", "Power" and "Keeper of the seven keys". I'm not generally a huge fan of medleys, but in this case, each part of it was head and shoulders above what had been played in the main set. And then came the second encore, which saw Kai Hanson and the rest of Gamma Ray return to the stage to play "Future world" and "I want out" alongside Helloween, which was simply stunning. Ultimately, then, a great end to a less than fulfilling evening.