That
Friday everything showed that Thessaloniki was
about to taste the coldest weekend of December.
While waiting outside Hydrogeios Club the doors
to open and enter a warm place we saw the first
fragile snowflakes. Was this something symbolic?
Was Simone Simons a winter fairy that brought
with her cold? Beyond silly symbolisms like this
one, Epica warmed the audience with their performance
and rewarded them for the two hours delay. Unfortunately
we missed Horizon's End, due to "technical" reasons,
according to an official statement. A few minutes
after 10 p.m. Epica stormed the stage with the
"Obsessive Devotion" from their latest album "The
Divine Conspiracy". The band had the "mission"
to warm up the Greek audience for the forthcoming
MMD'08 and showed in a very good form. They were
also pretty confident, despite some instability
in their sound, because of technical problems.
Against all -health- odds Ms. Simons was enjoying
every single note and deleted all of my reservations
about her potential. You see studio performances
can significantly vary to live ones, especially
in symphonic/operatic metal bands, but thankfully
we didn't see anything of this. I can't say the
same for her stage show and setting, which was
quite pop-wise, if I can use this term. "Sensorium"
sent the audience to heaven and all of the band's
greatest songs followed in a very tight show.
The usual compliments from the band please the
three hundred people inside the club, who gave
the right response when comments about the rival
Athens' audience were heard (sometimes I get the
feeling that this is a part of a ritual repeating
each time). In conclusion Epica bridged the two
major events for MMD and maintained their fan
base with a solid performance. |
