I am extremely jealous! You'll have to post reviews of the shows you attend!
For those of you who might be interested in Tarot, - here's the story of their first tour in Germany ever:
Zac's indepth tour report 
Zac's picture gallery -part 1-
Zac's picture gallery -part 2-:
Zachary Hietala said:
Here's some funny out takes from Germany tour.
Ready for the spicy drinks...
Entering Halford Bar
After the few spicy drinks...
Halford & Tecs
Fan & Ewo
Zac & Fans
What Bochum is all a about, he...
Bochum
Peacefull living in the buss...
Before
After
This guy didn't have a rubber skirt, but you got the idea...
Pecu & Fan
Finnish friends brought the flag...
Kuopio Hockes Team Rules
Pecu's transportation...
Pecu on Bike
Basty did schedules for every show and they were not ordinary...
Schedule 1
Schedule 2
You got to do something...
Killing Time!
Buy Those F***ing Shirts!!
Pecu's moment in fame...
Scream For Me Assholes!!
Gorba finito...
Tour Is Over
God damn!
Sami
Zac
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Photo galleries of some German shows:
06-02-2007: Knust, Hamburg
Owner: Christian Lessner
09-02-2007: Bochum, Matrix
Owner: Robert Latuske
10-02-2007: Munich, Metropolis
Owner:
www.paranoid-zine.com
05-02-2007: Berlin, Columbia Club
Owner: Elke Huber,
www.powermetal.de
13-02-2007: Nürnberg, Hirsch
Owner: Juli Groh,
www.rawol.com
========================================================================================
And this is my very personal diary...
Thu, Feb 08, 2007 - Tarot in Cologne
Sooo - it finally happened!! Our first Tarot live gig - and hell, WHAT a night out!!
This year, Christmas was quite early. Precisely, on Feb 8th. It even had been snowing in Cologne, for the very first time in this winter!
The evening started with Diablo, a band I didn't know before (and must admit wasn't too fond of when checking out a few internet samples). Bad mistake! They damn well kicked off the party, getting everybody going. Definitely a band worth watching closely once more!
And then - "Crows Fly Black"! Goose bumps during the intro. And here they come, all real and moving... For years we had been waiting for this moment, and they completey blew us away. I remember "Traitor" and "Pyre of Gods" being played, then "Follow Me into Madness". One of my all-time favourites, - never DREAMED they'd ever play that one here! "Look at me, I'll create you a dream..." And hell, they did!
It's something to get addicted to.
Next songs were
Bleeding Dust
Veteran of the Psychic Wars
Crawlspace
Before The Skies Come Down
Undead Son
Ashes to the Stars
Rider of the Last Day (Feet in the Mud, Fist to the Sky!)
and You.
I had loved these songs before, but watching Tarot perform them live is even a higher league...
I think most of the people felt the same, as there were repeated "Tarot! Tarot! Tarot!" shoutings again and again. They really rocked the house! What a great band! What a great setlist. What a great evening!!
Ewo -the BIG man in rock & roll!- selling T-Shirts ("Buy those F***ing Shirts!!!") and CDs. In an old little club in Cologne, imagine that! Emppu, Tuomas and Jukka watching the Tarot show amongst the audience, just like any of the fans. Jukka saved my life when he came and fixed a problem with my digital camera (I had borrowed it from my brother and, of course, mixed up all the using instructions he had given me). Shame! But everyone of the guys were waiting very kindly and patiently, until Jukka finished explaining to us which buttons to push, and finally, a great souvenir photo was taken. Pheww!!
No chance for a word or a picture with the Heroes of the Day, unfortunately, - not a look from Zac, waah! But we tried our best to make the band feel welcome, singing along the words and making as much noise as we could. They didn't play "Warhead" this time (maybe due to the fact that their Nightwish buddies had been waiting for them all evening, - a great gesture of support for their fellow band I think!), but today Tarot will play in Bochum, - another chance and another great night for us to come!!!
Hell, I wish they could stay forever!!
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Fri, Feb 09, 2007 - Tarot in Bochum
Ewo -guarding the merch again- says things are looking good, which is, of course, what we all have been longing to hear!
It's Friday night, and a nice crowd has gathered, determined to party. Even our Spanish friends from Madrid have come over to witness the show. Many Tarot shirts around, Ewo seems to sell quite a lot of tour shirts (Yes, there are special "Crows over Germany" tour shirts!) No girlies, actually, but you grab all you can get!!
btw, who the hell invented that silly rumour that Tarot is a band for guys only??? I have seen as many girls banging and singing along.
Bochum lies in an area that is known for metal and steel industry. No doubt that's the reason why it is also kind of a secret capital of heavy metal music in Germany! One of our biggest metal magazines, The Rock Hard magazine, is situated in Dortmund nearby. They had put Tarot's "Ashes to the Stars" promotional video clip on their Feb. issue DVD and also done an enthusiastic review of the "Crows Fly Black" CD. The other one, Metal Hammer, the mag featuring the "Crows over Germany" tour, did a report and have "Traitor" on their Feb. issue CD sampler. Seems to have worked out pretty well! A lot of people seem to know the songs and the words by heart! From the first killer riff of "Crows Fly Black" on, the audience is celebrating the band.
And they have good reason to do so: Two of the most powerful voices in metal music, a killer bass and a most passionate drummer, a guitar player playing with the speed of light, not to forget the great keyboards, keeping it all together... What a hell of a band!! They know exactly what they're doing, and they get everyone in the house.
The setlist is the same as it was in Cologne and has long since turned out a wall of hits: heavy, fast, intense! Thumbs up for your choice, guys!! The older songs are celebrated as much as the new ones, and the band on stage seem to enjoy themselves. Pheww!! They might decide to come back then? The regular show ends with a definite highlight, "Ashes to the Stars", when the audience is taking their pride in trying to sing louder than the band...
The encore begins with Zac playing a short guitar solo and then Janne doing the intro to "Rider of the Last Day". Always been my favourite track of "Suffer Our Pleasures", but watching Marco sing it live is even so much more impressive! I will never understand how a voice like his could be overheard here for almost twenty years. In fact, all of the Tarot guys are expert musicians. We knew this from their records, of course, but their outstanding live performances just put a big, fat exclamation point to it!! I can only hope that the metal people all over Germany take their chance to check out this diamond in a world of rhinestones.
In Bochum, the audience is fully convinced by the quality. They keep shouting for the band, even after the guys have left and background music has started.
It's over, damn.
Still, here`s hoping. Aschaffenburg is not too far away...
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Wed, Feb 14, 2007 - Tarot in Aschaffenburg
Our spontaneous plans to go see the Tarot show in Stuttgart on Monday got spoiled by a nasty cold. Too much heavy singing in smoky environments...
(Singing!! not drinking
)
So today is our last chance to prove that we want them here. Nice venue, bad circumstances: It's been raining all day, took us 3 hours to get here instead of -normally- 2, and when we arrive, it seems that some people even decided to never show up at all. It's a much smaller crowd than in Bochum, many of them very young, girls with their mothers. Some Tarot shirts, too. Yet we get the queasy feeling that this audience won't really rock. Please, don't let this be the last impression they take with them from Germany!!
Diablo -as always- give their best, but are facing technical problems this time. They get a friendly, but not too enthusiastic response from the crowd.
Then Tarot enter the stage and begin to play a killer version of "Crows Fly Black". And the unthinkable happens: People just stand and stare.
After the second chorus (just before the "Earth and sky..." part), the band stops playing, and Marco asks if there's anyone in here. By his gestures, he gets them going, and when everyone is screaming, the band finally plays on. Still it seems like most of the people are completely unfamiliar with the songs or never even had the slightest idea what they'd get into by coming here.
Tarot stay totally relaxed.
They play like hell, Pecu is drumming like a thunderstorm, Zac keeps moving from one side of the stage to the other, strangely enough, they seem to have fun! (maybe that's because they know it's their last show here and tomorrow they'll have a homerun in Helsinki?) Between the songs Marco is joking and introducing the titles.
And step by step they do what they probably always do, - what makes them Tarot, one of the best bands ever: They GET this stubborn crowd
!! , a little more with every move they make. They turn viewers into fans. And while finally everybody is screaming and shouting for them, Marco explains that now we are a "quality crowd" (which is a small crowd making a whole lot more noise than you'd expect by the number).
Hell, they're a quality band!!
Whatever you'll expect when coming to their shows - they'll give you so much more!!
And more we get. Once again I must say the setlist is a masterpiece, expertly composed for the occasion. They play the full set including "Rider of the Last Day", "You" and "Warhead". What a high-energy ending to an evening that started so slowly!!
Afterwards, the band comes out to meet the fans. Ewo gives tour posters and autograph cards for free. The "You" Girlies, Tour Shirts Size M and Longsleeves Size XL are sold out. Everybody gets their opportunity to say hello and take their souvenir photos.
In a Metal Hammer report, Marco said that in case just a handful of people would show up to the Tarot gigs, he'd rather invite them to a snackbar to have a "currywurst" (a quite popular German snack he seems to like a lot). Well, after having been to 3 shows, we never received one so far, so here's hoping we must have been too many yet...
The first step to conquer Europe is done, and the second is soon to follow!
We're already eagerly waiting for them to come back!!
