Photo Reports
Fans flocked to Piere’s in Fort Wayne, Indiana on a Thursday night November 2nd, 2023 to rock out on the first night of the tour of Black Stone Cherry with special guests Giovannie and The Hired Guns and Jigsaw Youth!
Jigsaw Youth, hailing from Staten Island, New York, kicked the night off with their punk/grunge vibe with a hint of nu metal. The 3-piece band totally rocked and got the crowd warmed up for the night! Taking the stage next was Giovannie and The Hired Guns, the 5 piece country/rock band based out of Texas. They had a really fun and engaging stage presence! Favorite memories were when they played Raymon Ayala and a cover of Pumped Up Kicks (Foster The People).
Finally, Black Stone Cherry hit the stage! Playing in front of a packed house, lead singer Chris Robertson said they purposefully started the tour in Fort Wayne, because it doesn’t matter what night of the week they play, Fort Wayne always shows up!! Black Stone Cherry is a rock band from Kentucky that has been on the scene for over 20 years now! They played new song Nervous along with several other hits such as Ringin In My Head, Me and Mary Jane and Lonely Train. What a solid good ol’ rock and roll band who loves their fans and is very engaging and interactive while on the stage! What a great show and I hope to see them again soon.
On Friday November 3rd , Psychework hit the last stop of their ‘Spark Of Hope‘ tour, presenting their new album of the same name, as they played their show at Hönö Baari in Tampere. Support was provided by Scars of Solitude, and although the venue wasn’t very packed it was still quite the night of good Finnish music and ended up being even better than anticipated!
Kvelertak has been touring through Europe the last month and a half, introducing their new album ‘Endling’, and we have been reporting this earlier from Helsinki and Munich. Since their shows are so full of energy it’s a true must see, and therefore we just had to be there for their last show of this tour which was in Antwerp.
The doors opened half an hour earlier than first planned, allowing warm-up act Cancer Bats to play an hour instead of half an hour. Cancer Bats was joined by guest vocalist Brooklyn Doran. She can be heard on their latest album Psychic Jailbreak, during the song Hammering on, but during this tour she also joined them live on stage.
Enjoy the photos:
Deathstars was part of the soundtrack of many of our youths, so them being back properly with a new album and tour was some of the most exciting news we could have gotten. So when their latest tour kicked off in Finland, we did all we could to be at the show at Tavastia in Helsinki. And with them came our favorite synth ghouls of Priest and the ever popular Finnish outfit King Satan! What a way to spend our Halloween night!
When two of renown Finnish musician Tuomas Saukkonen’s projects join forces to go on a co-headlining tour, you know that is something you won’t want to miss. The recently reinvigorated Before The Dawn and consistently striking Wolfheart set up an extensive tour throughout Europe, but not before hitting the homecountry with a small tour. So when they dropped by at Tavastia in Helsinki, we had to be there. Added to that, we got a nice warming up from the in the meantime highly respected melodeath masters of Brymir!
After many years(!) of waiting and many times of rescheduling Deathstars finally made it to Tampere on their ‘Everything Destroys Europe Tour’. You can literally see the excitement of the fans: I don’t think I have ever seen such a long line of people queue for a show at Olympia-Kortelli.
The evening starts with a home match for King Satan, who undoubtable have their own fan base with them. After that Priest bring us something completely different with their synth music. They caught me a bit by surprise, but I can’t argue that their music has something. I’ve listened to ‘History in Black‘ approximately 200 times in the last 3 days. We even got to experience the live premiere of their new song ‘Burning Love‘.
And then Deathstars hit the stage with ‘Night Electric Night‘. It’s one hit after the other, the only song I was missing on the set list was ‘Play God‘, but as much as I would have loved to heard that song live, I wasn’t really expecting it anyway. Whiplasher had to scold us several times and remind us that we “only speak when we’re spoken too”. He kept giving us commands, but I don’t think anyone minded it, we happily screamed when he told us to and raised our hands on his command. At the end of the show, I just can’t stop smiling. I’m not sure when I enjoyed a show this much the last time. The only thing that comes to mind hitting me equally hard has been Green Day 14 years ago, back when I was still a teenager. I need more of this, the approximately one and a half hours were just not enough. This was quite possibly one of the best shows I’ve ever been to.
Whenever a band does a reunion, it’s a big deal, even if it’s just for a few shows. Even though I don’t really know Poisonblack, it was clear that I had to try to catch one of the 20th ‘Escapexstacyn‘ anniversary shows. Luckily enough I got the chance to attend their show at Tullikamari Klubi in Tampere and my expectations were certainly met. Not only did they play ‘Escapexstacyn’ in its entirety, they also got a lot of the old members back on stage, even if, in some cases, just for a couple of songs.
Blood Command recently released a massive new album with ‘World Domination’ and embarked on a tour of the same name to present their new work to fans all over the continent on stage. So when they hit up On The Rocks in Helsinki again, we didn’t hesitate and quickly made our way to the venue for a shot of the high energy shows they are so well-known for. Opening for them were the local metal heroes Mørket, easily matching the main event in energetic performance.
German post-hardcore band Annisokay had a busy October this year with their European tour. Despite a bit of a rocky start and some rescheduling due to health issues on the part of some band members, everything went according to plan. We had the opportunity to see the concert on Backstage, and it was a reunion for Bavarian fans with one of the bands of choice on the German alternative scene. After a reshuffle, following the amicable departure of previous vocalist Dave Grunewald, a new man, Rudi Schwarzer, arrived to complete the dirty vocals and has done an excellent job, having already recorded the latest album “Aurora” as well the latest Ep “Abyss Pt I”.
As support bands on this tour in Germany, we had the Scottish To Kill Achilles as well as the Norwegians Fixation, two bands with enormous potential that we will be following closely.
Norway’s Kvelertak went on the road for a few shows here in Germany as part of their European tour to present their latest work “Endling” to the public.
We attended the gig in Munich and, as usual, the biggest room in the Backstage Club was packed to the rafters for one of those sweaty nights, with lots of moshing and crowd-surfing from both the audience and the band! Canada’s Cancer Bats had the honour and merit of warming up the well the crowd before the main act.
