![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Nightwish - Elves in Hades
Sep. 8th, 2003 11:55 amI spent about a week wondering if it was worth it to go all the way to New York to go to the Nightwish concert. I'd heard a couple of songs by Nightwish and thought they were good, but not a 5-hour ride's worth of good. I was so wrong...
The concert was being held in the main room of Amore (a venue in New York). When we arrived at the club it was about 5:00 pm, so the area where the club was located did not receive the benefit of night to soften its impact - it was a garishly gang-grafetti'ed part of town and the club was a converted warehouse. No bathrooms existed for miles around, and we didn't want to lose our parking space looking for one, so we went in. The club had two main areas -the area where Nightwish was to play was initially locked. Everyone who went in early was confined to the front area.
At first I thought I had been consigned to a truly twisted part of Hades, where one is forced to remain in a small, beer scented room with no AC for four hours with a bunch of skinheads listening to bad metal. It must have been bad metal night or something. There was one exception - Divinity Destroyed sounded very good. Their singer was on key. Wow. They're even better on CD (one can adjust the decibles, and the instruments are not distorting)...
Anyway, to make matters worse, there was nowhere to sit (and we were pretty tired having driven for five hours... I tried sitting on the floor in an out-of-the-way place, and a large skinhead came up and said that wasn't allowed... The decibles were turned up to ear-splitting loudness (we forgot our ear plugs, but improvised with wadded up napkins). We were not allowed to leave once we'd entered - our tickets were good for one entry only, so we stayed there listening to bad band after bad band singing out of key, waiting for the main area to open up. I came very close to saying, "Take me home", but something told me to wait. I hid behind a video game, spread out my old jacket, and sat down. NObody saw me. Heh heh. I was INVISIBLE, I tell you. MWAHAHAHA.
Finally, the back room opened. We went back there, and a blast of cool, fresh air hit us. No longer beer scented. Good sign. To our immediate left was... an area with chairs and tables... with a large skinhead blocking the way. Apparently only Very Special people were allowed up there. For some reason, he decided we were Special, and let us enter the enchanted realm and Have a Seat. It was getting better. Resolved to stay there until the place closed and not budge an inch, neither of us had drinks to avoid any unnecessary trips to the restroom. Who knew if the skinhead would remain in a good mood and let us back up. Maybe our Specialness was Temporary... The rest of the vast room was standing room only viewing and mosh pit. Though tempted to dance, I knew that would not be possible in that environment, so we stayed put.
Pretty soon, another band got on stage - a fairly decent, technically competent metal band called Twilight Oddyssey. I was impressed by the fact that I didn't want to get up and scream "PLEASE STOP!!! I'LL TALK!!! Just tell me what information you want!!!", or worse yet, "For the love of GOD, man, TAKE SOME FIBER!!!!!" These were responses elicited by several of the other bands. Don't get me wrong. I love good metal. I listened to metal before I became acquainted with the softer genres. But some of this stuff was just.... bad.
I had joked all night long to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rialian that the opening act of Nightwish would be Babelfish (just because it rhymed and sounded cute). Apparently I managed to invoke something, as the band that was on directly before Nightwish was the most ATROCIOUS piece of work I'd ever heard. Nobody was on key. Nobody. I don't know what the name of that band was, but they were horrible. When the stage went dark after they finished, the crowd cheered. I think it was because they went away. People were cracking up at my expressions of abject horror.
Then we heard someone testing the stage equipment... in Finnish!!! Nightwish was almost ready! The speakers were blaring some aggro-metal in which the singer sounded like he was being eviscerated with a spoon. I was more than ready for a change when the speakers went quiet. Every so often, a tall elf with shining blond hair would enter the stage to do some technical stuff, and then disappear. The stage went even darker. The sea of humanity began eerily chanting, night-WISH, night-WISH, night-WISH.... When the lights went on, I almost fainted dead away.
I've seen people who embody the word 'elf' very nicely. I've seen and corresponded with quite a few, in fact. But I've never seen anything like this. All I can say is, they grow them Mighty Fine in Finland, let me tell you. They play an intricate combination of deep metal riffs and operatic vocals, not an easy task to accomplish, and they never missed a note. But it wasn't just their technical skill. It wasn't just that the lady had the voice of an angel or a nightingale. It wasn't just that two of them had long blond hair down to their arses and flirted up the audience from start to finish (Finnish?) like there was no tomorrow. It wasn't just that the Lady played the audience like a harp, raising and lowering their energy in an almost tantric dance of increasing intensity. It was that, without any doubt in my mind, I was seeing elves. The real, live, genuine, without a doubt, article. And they knew how to use it. I was expecting the venue to implode from the overabundance of beauty...
When they started their first number (I can't remember what song it was), it wasn't just music, it was a magical journey, an elevation of spirit, a message of hope and starlight carried by sound - not necessarily even by the individual words (though that was part of it), but by the music itself. Such magic I have not seen on stage. Transported, I listened to set after set of deep metal guitar riffs that seemed to emanate from the core of the earth, combined with the angel voice of the Lady in the white gown.
If you get a chance, see them. Buy a ticket to Finland and see them. If one cannot do that, their website is http://www.nightwish.com. A CD is coming out in a couple of weeks that contains most of what they sang last night.
The concert was being held in the main room of Amore (a venue in New York). When we arrived at the club it was about 5:00 pm, so the area where the club was located did not receive the benefit of night to soften its impact - it was a garishly gang-grafetti'ed part of town and the club was a converted warehouse. No bathrooms existed for miles around, and we didn't want to lose our parking space looking for one, so we went in. The club had two main areas -the area where Nightwish was to play was initially locked. Everyone who went in early was confined to the front area.
At first I thought I had been consigned to a truly twisted part of Hades, where one is forced to remain in a small, beer scented room with no AC for four hours with a bunch of skinheads listening to bad metal. It must have been bad metal night or something. There was one exception - Divinity Destroyed sounded very good. Their singer was on key. Wow. They're even better on CD (one can adjust the decibles, and the instruments are not distorting)...
Anyway, to make matters worse, there was nowhere to sit (and we were pretty tired having driven for five hours... I tried sitting on the floor in an out-of-the-way place, and a large skinhead came up and said that wasn't allowed... The decibles were turned up to ear-splitting loudness (we forgot our ear plugs, but improvised with wadded up napkins). We were not allowed to leave once we'd entered - our tickets were good for one entry only, so we stayed there listening to bad band after bad band singing out of key, waiting for the main area to open up. I came very close to saying, "Take me home", but something told me to wait. I hid behind a video game, spread out my old jacket, and sat down. NObody saw me. Heh heh. I was INVISIBLE, I tell you. MWAHAHAHA.
Finally, the back room opened. We went back there, and a blast of cool, fresh air hit us. No longer beer scented. Good sign. To our immediate left was... an area with chairs and tables... with a large skinhead blocking the way. Apparently only Very Special people were allowed up there. For some reason, he decided we were Special, and let us enter the enchanted realm and Have a Seat. It was getting better. Resolved to stay there until the place closed and not budge an inch, neither of us had drinks to avoid any unnecessary trips to the restroom. Who knew if the skinhead would remain in a good mood and let us back up. Maybe our Specialness was Temporary... The rest of the vast room was standing room only viewing and mosh pit. Though tempted to dance, I knew that would not be possible in that environment, so we stayed put.
Pretty soon, another band got on stage - a fairly decent, technically competent metal band called Twilight Oddyssey. I was impressed by the fact that I didn't want to get up and scream "PLEASE STOP!!! I'LL TALK!!! Just tell me what information you want!!!", or worse yet, "For the love of GOD, man, TAKE SOME FIBER!!!!!" These were responses elicited by several of the other bands. Don't get me wrong. I love good metal. I listened to metal before I became acquainted with the softer genres. But some of this stuff was just.... bad.
I had joked all night long to
rialian that the opening act of Nightwish would be Babelfish (just because it rhymed and sounded cute). Apparently I managed to invoke something, as the band that was on directly before Nightwish was the most ATROCIOUS piece of work I'd ever heard. Nobody was on key. Nobody. I don't know what the name of that band was, but they were horrible. When the stage went dark after they finished, the crowd cheered. I think it was because they went away. People were cracking up at my expressions of abject horror. Then we heard someone testing the stage equipment... in Finnish!!! Nightwish was almost ready! The speakers were blaring some aggro-metal in which the singer sounded like he was being eviscerated with a spoon. I was more than ready for a change when the speakers went quiet. Every so often, a tall elf with shining blond hair would enter the stage to do some technical stuff, and then disappear. The stage went even darker. The sea of humanity began eerily chanting, night-WISH, night-WISH, night-WISH.... When the lights went on, I almost fainted dead away.
I've seen people who embody the word 'elf' very nicely. I've seen and corresponded with quite a few, in fact. But I've never seen anything like this. All I can say is, they grow them Mighty Fine in Finland, let me tell you. They play an intricate combination of deep metal riffs and operatic vocals, not an easy task to accomplish, and they never missed a note. But it wasn't just their technical skill. It wasn't just that the lady had the voice of an angel or a nightingale. It wasn't just that two of them had long blond hair down to their arses and flirted up the audience from start to finish (Finnish?) like there was no tomorrow. It wasn't just that the Lady played the audience like a harp, raising and lowering their energy in an almost tantric dance of increasing intensity. It was that, without any doubt in my mind, I was seeing elves. The real, live, genuine, without a doubt, article. And they knew how to use it. I was expecting the venue to implode from the overabundance of beauty...
When they started their first number (I can't remember what song it was), it wasn't just music, it was a magical journey, an elevation of spirit, a message of hope and starlight carried by sound - not necessarily even by the individual words (though that was part of it), but by the music itself. Such magic I have not seen on stage. Transported, I listened to set after set of deep metal guitar riffs that seemed to emanate from the core of the earth, combined with the angel voice of the Lady in the white gown.
If you get a chance, see them. Buy a ticket to Finland and see them. If one cannot do that, their website is http://www.nightwish.com. A CD is coming out in a couple of weeks that contains most of what they sang last night.
