Nightwish: Imaginaerum

The main motivation to route my trip to the US via Europe was to attend one of Nightwish's Imaginaerum concerts in Finland. Ironically, the tickets to this concert, bought legally and ahead of time, ended up being inferior to that of the Rammstein concert (being seating tickets instead of standing tickets).

Quality of the photos are pretty poor given the distance.
Posionblack
Another Finnish gothic metal band opened for Nightwish. While not the same caliber as Apocalyptica, they were quite an interesting band. They had a symphonic sound, with some great music scores. I did not particularly like the vocalist; don't think he has the range or the quality to really do justice to the songs. Of the lyrics I did manage to get (all the songs were in English), they did sound interesting; but the lead singer's voice was quite distorted. I would be quite keen to hear more of their studio albums; they do hold some promise.

Nightwish
The recent Imaginaerum album is quite complex, and I was looking forward to seeing how it would translate from a film/symphonic setting to a live show. While the band started with the same track as the album, I was pleasantly surprised how they managed to incorporate some of their older tracks (even some pre Anette songs like "Wish I had an angel") into the flow.

Imaginaerum is supposed to be a loosely coupled set of stories, and thus this made complete sense. There was a small break in flow by concluding the show with the first single "Storytime", but then the show does have to end off with a bang, does it not? The neat idea of this flow however is that it does allow for greater variety in how other Nightwish songs are incorporated into the show.

It was also great to hear the ulliean pipes (similar to bagpipes) and accompanying set of Celtic instruments played live by Troy Donockley. He has become almost another member of the band given the number of songs he participates in!

It was a very enjoyable concert, and the detour was certainly worth it!