Symphony X in Hamburg, GER, 16-Apr-2003

Lord Of The Snow

The Wrath Divine
Apr 18, 2003
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Hamburg / Germany
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Hi,

I thought some of you might be interested in how Symphony X performs on the current tour.

After 3 days of not being able to register for this forum, I finally got my account, so here I go:

I went to the Stratovarius/Symphony X/Thunderstone show at the "Dock's" in Hamburg/ Germany on the 16th of April.

I never heared of Thunderstone before, but they were a good opener - they had good songs, good musicians and they were trying to interact with the crowd and they did rather well. Good luck to you guys, you deserve it!

15 minutes later, Symphony X entered the (unfortunately rather small) stage. It was my first time to see them live. They started - well, I would call it "a bit shy" and I was beginning to feel a bit disappointed by Russel's voice and performing - but he only had to get his engine running. He (and the band) became better and better with each song.

"Communion And The Oracle" was the first climax - they were brilliant. After that they played "Out of the Ashes" and it was a killer too, followed by the superb "Sea of Lies".

One row behind me, a lunatic kept yelling "Stratovarius", but he was more or less alone with that wish :)

Their set ended much too soon with "The Turning". I hope they will come back for a headliner tour in autumn, I will be there.

Here is the set list (playing time ~45 min):
1. Evolution
2. Inferno
3. Wicked
4. Communion And The Oracle
5. Out Of The Ashes
6. Sea of Lies
7. The Turning

Symphony X was (in my opinion) not the best opener for Stratovarius. Especially the first three songs were too heavy for Stratovarius' fans - I personally am not into those songs either. What about a double-header with Symphony X and Dream Theaer????? :Spin:

After another 30 minutes, Stratovarius hit the stage. My gosh... they were boring... after 25 minutes I felt as I would not be able to keep awake for their whole show. They are all good musicians and a lot of their songs sound nice on CD - but live they cannot compete with musicians like Symphony X. Stratovarious promised a long set, but left the stage 80 minutes later and came back two more times so their whole set was ~110 minutes - this is not, what I call a long set... :cool:

All in all - it was a nice concert with Thunderstone and Symphony X and for their hardcore fans with Stratovarious.

I am definetly looking for Sym X to return as a headliner with a good sound and a good light show - but they have to beat Dream Theater on their "Touring Into Infinity tour" :)

Hope this helps you a bit and I would like to read other comments.
Oh yes: merchandising prices were OK: 17 EUR for a T-Shirt, 22 EUR for a Longsleeve.

See you on the headliner tour.


Lord Of The Snow
 
I was there too.
Thunderstone was surprisingly good, Stratovarius wasn't bad either. They had a great show with pyros etc.
But their music is nothing special imo, just typical power metal. It gets boring after a while.

Symphony X were great, Russell was in good form,although
he wasn't as good as the last time i saw him with Star One in Hamburg.
The Set was a little short imo, I thought they'd play at least one more song. The Sound was ok
Btw, the last song was Of Sins And Shadows as usually, not The Turning.

Hope they will come back for a headliner tour soon.
 
I was there too... just wanted to see Symphony X, and yeah, Stratovarius pretty much bored me as well.

I couldn't see Russel with Star One although I really wanted to... damn school exams, argh!
 
I would fail the most important exam in my life, and work as a garbage man for the rest of my life to see god.