PlanetMosh Keeping it Metal
Tonight was the second UK date for Tarja, and the attendance was good – by the time she came on stage moving around the venue was difficult due to the packed crowd. The support act on this leg of her European tour is My Own Ghost, a band from Luxembourg.
My own ghost kicked the night off with a great set that went down well. It’s mainly rock with plenty of loud guitars, but they also throw in electronic elements and at times there’s a pop feel, so the resulting mixture is a fairly distinctive sound that I really enjoyed. Singer Julie Rodesch has a good voice and does a very good job as frontwoman in getting the crowd involved. They have a new album due out in a few weeks time and that’ll definitely be worth checking out.
Tarja played London last year as part of the Rock on Green festival, an event that due to date changes, lineup changes and clashes with other gigs resulted in a poor turnout, so it’s good to see that she’s drawn a good crowd for this tour date. The fact she’s released her best albums yet in the last few months (The brightest void & The shadow self) can only have helped. Happily the set tonight included plenty of songs from those albums as well as some fan favourites and a Nightwish medley.
One thing I noticed on earlier dates in the European tour is that whereas in the past Tarja has performed well, the other musicians on stage felt like hired session musicians rather than there being the feeling it was a proper band, but now with her new lineup there’s a real sense that this is now a proper band. There’s more interaction between them all than I’ve seen before, and it’s clear to see how much they’re enjoying themselves, and how happy Tarja is on stage too. This all means that Tarja gigs now are better than they’ve been at any time in the past.
It really is a great set – as always, Tarja sounds fantastic, and she looks to be having a great time on stage, as do her band, and that sense of enjoyment transmits to the audience. It’s nice to see that the set these days is almost totally based on her solo material with just one medley of Nighwish songs included as a reminder of her time with the band. There’s also a cover of Muse’s “Supremacy” which works very well and fits nicely into the set.
A superb performance from Tarja and her band, and I’m sure the support act, My own ghost will have made some new fans tonight.
Tarja setlist:
Demons in you
500 letters
No bitter end
Lucid dreamer
Eagle eye
Calling from the wild
Supremacy
Nightwish medley
Love to hate
Victim of ritual
Undertaker
Too many
Encore:
Innocence
Die alive
Until my last breath
