Well seems like Bremen was good but hehe, Leverkusen was at least AS good ! I hadn't known that there would be a warm up show but anyway, it was great - as usual !
The place was a bit unusual for a Saxon gig, and so was the audience or at least some part of it. The actual venue was a round "city hall" type of building, with a huge lobby with food stalls and a cloakroom and all the rest of it, which gave it a bit of a strange look as everything seemed so in order ! Where has the rock and roll spirit gone when you enter a Saxon gig and the first thing that jumps to the eye is a huge "A night with Max Greger" advert ?!? I also don't want to have my ticket checked by a geezer in a noble suit and a silken tie saying "good evening sir", but anyway. Just inside, the fun continued: there were families with kids present, and the whole thing felt like a huge pick nick place, just indoors. Shocked by these hard circumstances, the only light at the end of the tunnel seemed the beer stall. Cheers !
The first band who got on was called "Jois" which is actually pronounced "Joyce". Apprently there were some kind of local heroes, and it soon got all too obvious why there are not more than that. Alright songs, but not very energetic on stage to say the least, or in other words, fine but dead boring. The only light at the end of the tunnel ... hang on, we've been there yet, haven't we ? Anyway, cheers !
Next were Knorkator. They are a German outfit who basically act as a comedy group making the mickey out of death metal. Their performance was a laugh - unlike Jois's however, it had been intended to be one this time. The rather questionable highlight of the set was as the singer started putting about thirty or fourty oranges into a huge mixing machine, scrambling them a slimy something - and then the whole lot was pumped into the audience so that everybody got wet, sticky and smelly. Remember GWAR ? Well, there you go, only difference was that GWAR used to do it with style while Knorkator seemed to consider this as a waste. Slightly gutted upon this I left and spent the rest of their gig in the toilet room, desparately trying to clean by beautiful Running Wild Shirt. Bastards, if anything remains on the shirt after the next wshing, you guys are dead next time you come to play near here.
Doro was next then. By now a lot more people had turned up and it looked like this might eventually become atmosperic (well, a bit). She started off with "I rule the ruins" and "White wedding" and basically played a best of set that contained only two new numbers. Some old Warlock tunes as well, "Buring the witches", "Hellbound", "Fuer immer" and "All we are". Cool ! The encore was "Bad blood" which is an anti-racist song which is actually one of my favourites of Doro's (maybe it's because I only know a couple ... anyway) so the only downer was that the band played it about twenty seven times as fast as on the album, which made it a bit hard to follow. After this, the lights went on and it was now time for the highlight - SAXON !!!
Saxon played a set that was quite different from the one in Bremen apprently (cool review by the way, thanks Michael & Tina), we didn't get "And the bands played on" and there were no "Broken Wings" either but we heard "Power & Glory" and "The eagles has landed". The three highlight to me were once again (1) "Princess of the night" which got the best reception fromt the audience throughout the entire evening, (2) the cool drum solo Of Fritz Randow - I usually find such solo thingies boring and leave for a beer, but this one was an exception, and finally (3) the Barbara Rudnik lookalike queen in the second row. If she reads this, let me say thank you for the most wonderful distraction from the show i could get. Are you coming again next tour ? ;-)
The new shirts looked nice as well and were sold at very fair prices - so in every way, thumbs up for Saxon and thanks for a @#%$ brilliant gig !!!
