Bands: Kreator + Caliban + Eluveitie + Emergency Gate
Day: 30th January 2009
Place: Teatro Sá Da Bandeira (Porto) PORTUGALDay: 30th January 2009
Price: 20€ presale / 23€ doors
Few more than 1 hour by car... and we arrived to Porto.
Before a concert is good to have a full stomach, so first we needed to eat some of the tastiest things ever and very typical from Porto, As Francesinhas. I already want another concert in Porto for enjoying again with that dish :P:P:P
Maybe in few months again with Bal Sagoth? :P
Once we arrived, we saw the place and it was pretty amazing. Teatro Sá Da Bandeira is a big theater and it would be a total experience to attend to a Metal show in such a place like that.
When we stepped in, Emergency Gate, the first band was already playing. They are a german band that plays the typical melodeath modern power metal, I remember I've heard something about them but didnt pay too much attention, and their music in live was ok, but just the same as many others. Not very original but they showed attitude, and it was a nice warming.
What amazed me was the fantastic, boombastic, unbeliavable sound of the place.
We dream in Galicia to have such a sound in a concert, and in fact it was pretty loud, but at the end of the 3 h. 30 min. of the show I didnt have any whistle or anything annoying in my auditive faculties!
Well, going on... Emergency Gate, just ok.
The next ones were the second main reason of our trip to Porto: the swiss band Eluveitie. They are one of the most successful bands of folk-celtic metal in the last years.
At first I thought that they dont go very well with the line up of the tour. But thinking about it, I'd say that none of the bands really fit with the old school thrash of Kreator. Maybe they wanted to attract very different kind of people through different styles, I dont know.
Eluveitie started really strong with Bloodstained Ground, and people started to go mad XD
Again perfect sound, perfect performance... and I started imagining one concert of them in here (yes I know I complain too much XDD but it's amazing how things change just few km far in other country... I had a terrible envy all the concert).
People also started to come more and more and first moshings as well. Calibaners were in the middle and they enjoyed the Eluveitie show on their "hardcore style way". So, meanwhile true fans were standing and enjoying the perfect mix of melodic death and celtic melodies, others near us started to push and so on... Once I saw one feet few cm. far from my face :S XD
Thankfully, calibaners stopped a bit the moshing when Eluveitie played their most famous hymn Iris Mona from their last album. Seems the song doesnt have so speedic tempo as some of the others... good! XD
They finished pretty soon, I had the feeling they just played 5 or 6 songs and the concert just started when they left :( It was short, but truly intense and amazing. And with such a sound it was a total delight. You could hear each one of the flutes, fiddle, acoustic guitars and all those traditional folk instruments mixed with the power of the electric guitars.
Just 2 words for Eluveitie: great & short
Eluveitie - Bloodstained Ground
After few minutes, the next band coming was Caliban, a dethcore or metalcore or hardcore melodeath or moderd hardcore-death or whatever. Lots of young fans with too much accumulated stress jumped in the middle of the place and started "dancing" on their way the music of Caliban.
The band really sounded great, but their music is quite empty under my sight. I was told about Caliban, they are probably one of the most famous hardcore bands arisen in the last 10 years. In fact I dont like that style and I know them :P So.. I guess I cannot be totally objective when I say I found their show quite dull. All the songs seemed to follow the same pattern, and I couldnt make a difference in between. And somehow we were commenting that maybe if they repeat the 3rd song in the place of the number 8, people wouldnt notice XDD.
Caliban and the Wall of Death
I've just found a different sight... and the singer asking if everything is ok at the end of the song XD
So, knowing what we were about to watch... we decided to explore the theater and went to the second floor, a much calmer place for watching Caliban with all their fans moshing extremely and "dancing hardcore" (one day I will make a post analyzing the funny hardcore dance).
Up there the sight was interesting as well... and we presenced the Wall of Death the singer asked to do in an amazing perspective. It recalled me when the starting of The Lord of the Rings with the camera flying over the masses of orcs trying the knock down the elvish forces XDD
We also decided to visit the shops, drink something and make some pics with some of the Eluveitie members who were there.
We thought it would be empty, since the Caliban concert was totally full of people, but there were many as well outside, probably like us, just waiting for Kreator and avoiding the hardcorers.
It was such an interesting view that we decided to stay half upstairs and half between the public with Kreator. So, after some refreshing time, Kreator started with Hordes of Chaos.
And no stop for breathing, one by one they started to shoot with no rest at all. And in fact they did a enormous setlist:
01. Intro
02. Hordes Of Chaos
03. Warcurse
04. Extreme Agression
05. Phobia
06. Voices Of The Dead
07. Enemy Of God
08. Destroy What Destroys You
09. Pleasure To Kill
10. To The Afterborn
11. Corpses Of Liberty
12. Demon Prince
13. The Patriarch
14. Violent Revolution
15. Terrible Certainty
16. Betrayer
17. Amok Run
18. Riot Of Violence
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19. Flag Of Hate
20. Tormentor
Kreator shows that they are a band that doesnt need to live from the past, like many others with a setlist with 5 songs from their last excellent Hordes of Chaos. An album which is probably better than many of their classic albums, and I found more than one person that thinks the same... but we all know... we might be heretics and dont understand a bit if we dare to say the last album is better than some of those 80's.
Anyway, I missed in the setlist some songs like People of the Lie, Impossible Brutality, Leave This World Behind or something from their Endorama album, which they totally avoid.
They had a screen behind all the show which showed videos for everyone of the songs, some very cool like the first one which we could see for Hordes Of Chaos and the next Warcurse.
Kreator - Hordes Of Chaos
And they showed they are a great and experienced band as no one over the scenary. Mille Petrozza's voice is not the same as in the CD but he has a lot of charisma. They were a bit static, for example, the bassist stayed most of the concert with that slow-time headbanging, and the other guitarist was quite stuck in the place but the show was great.
The theater was totally full in the 1 hour and half Kreator played, and ambient was unbeliavable. Porto's public is so participative that always I go there they made me to feel envy of that place :)
3'5 h. of pure brutality!
Kreator - Betrayer
By the way, the card in my cam was auto-erased and I lost all the pics and videos I had. Thanks to my friend I could put here more pics and upload some vids to youtube. Finally I recovered some with a pc program, but it really is a bit scary that it happens when I dont have a second cam :S
Funny moment in the parking when leaving Porto... when we found a huge queue of lots of people who wanted to take the car at the same time. Is it usual at 00:00 AM that everybody wants to go out of the parkings? what happens in Porto at that hour???
Muito obrigado :P