Awesome, like way awesome. The crowd was surprisingly sizable, about 200 people, and they were loud and raucous during Aria's one hour 45 minute set (I believe the longest set of the U.S. shows). The whole affair was conducted in Russian, all the lyrics of course, and all the between song stage banter. The band's performance was energetic and tight, the sound quality was good, and I could tell they were having a good time on stage. I was really into the vocal harmonies too. The set was weighted very much towards the newer albums, but I didn't mind. There were numerous times where the band cut to do a crowd singalong, and every time the crowd was yelling out every word. Everything had that "this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing" feeling to it.
There was an opening band from Boston that I'd never heard of before this show. They too did everything in Russian except for straightforward covers of Smoke on the Water and Metal Heart. The set changeover between bands was about 15 minutes.
The crowd was almost entirely Russian community folks - very few of the regular area metalheads.
I thought it was kind of funny that their Tshirts at the merch booth were individually shrinkwrapped (like CDs).
There was an opening band from Boston that I'd never heard of before this show. They too did everything in Russian except for straightforward covers of Smoke on the Water and Metal Heart. The set changeover between bands was about 15 minutes.
The crowd was almost entirely Russian community folks - very few of the regular area metalheads.
I thought it was kind of funny that their Tshirts at the merch booth were individually shrinkwrapped (like CDs).
