as mentioned before, on april 1st i was at Opeth 20th Anniversary concert @ Essen, DE. They played an almost 3 hour long set consisting on 2 parts: 1st the entire Blackwater Park album, and then after a break another set consisting of 1 track from every album.
It was a seated venue in a cinema theater, we all had a reserved seat which was pretty annoying. When Opeth started to play people were still walking around in the darkness between the rows looking for their seats, thanks to which the first
The Leper Affinity was pretty much lost on me... It was also extremely weird and frustrating having to sit during such an exciting and loud event, you could just feel the entire row of seats swinging back and forth because of all those sitting headbanging people
Our places were also quite far from the stage, and my eyesight is pretty poor, and so is my camera's zooming ability...
This is my greatest complaint of the whole evening: i wanted to see Mikael close so badly, but i couldn't even walk up to the stage because the narrow opening between the rows was quickly filled with desperate fans who also didn't want to stay seated...
The sound was great, even if it seemed they blew the right side speakers during the 1st or 2nd track!
You could hear that during the quieter/slower parts that it was cracking on the low bass tones. Anyway, even that seemed like a minor disturbance to me...
During the first set Mikael almost didn't say a word at all. They just played on, and it was awesome!!!
notworthyI fimled my fav.
Harvest, The Drapery Falls and
Blackwater Park, but the latter was almost 12 min. long so youtube wouldn't let me upload it
After a 10 min. break there was a second set. During this set Mikael was his usual self, and talked much between the songs
He said, among other things, that Dan Swanö was sitting there in the audience (we saw him walking outside after the concert!), and that after Opeth are done with this Anniversary tour they would start working on the new album and will come back touring next year probably!
That was great news, at least if we can trust Mikael on that ('cause he likes talking shit during the show!
)
The second set looked like this:
Forest Of October
Advent
April Ethereal
The Moor
Wreath
Hope Leaves
Reverie/Harlequin Forest
The Lotus Eater
Mikael said that
The Moor was probably their most challenging track to play live and that they haven't played it live much (if at all?)
Harlequin Forest being one of my most fav Opeth tracks, was my personal highlight of the evening!! It was terrific!
rock: Unfortunately my memory card was full and i didn't film the entire song, but here's what i got:
it's a pity the brilliant drums kind-of-solo at the end didn't fit on the film
At the end the band was totally exaughsted after playing almost 3 hours so they didn't get out in the hall to chat with the fans... I only can hope this was not the last time i ever saw them and hope to see them on a "normal" metal gig where i can stand up front, and to meet Mikael in person one day too...
A friend of mine who has seen them that day for the 4th time said it was the best performance ever and absolutely mind-blowing! I agree, even if i had nothing to compare it to! It is now the second best metal concert i have ever witnessed!
