Edguy, Cynic and Ensiferum

Club Capitol, Perth – 7th January 2010

Tonight was the first of two Screamfest sideshows for Perth, featuring Finnish Viking metallers Ensiferum, US prog/death legends Cynic, and German power metal heroes Edguy.

It’s not every day that you would see a great band like Ensiferum as openers to a show, but tonight they kicked off before 8.30pm with many punters missing the first few songs of their set. That was a shame because their epic introduction and stage entrance was enough to send chills down the spine. Opening with the title track from the latest album ‘From Afar’, Ensiferum displayed energy and passion immediately. Draped in kilts and shirtless, unafraid to show some man blubber, they had powerful windmills and moved into ‘Token Of Time’. After the catchy ‘One More Magic Potion’ and much to the delight of some of the older fans they had another track from their earlier days of Jari Maenpaa with ‘Into Battle’. With ‘Ahti’ the crowd got more excited starting joyous moshpits, and this continued until the perfect ending of ‘Iron’.

A great tracklisting for such a short set and top stage presence ensured a triumphant show. One interesting observation was the keyboardist Emmi having a microphone, although the female vocals were still played over a backing track, but hey I guess she makes up with it with her headbanging. Another thing worth mentioning is the bass of Sami Hinkka. This was a massive 7 string bass with curves shaped like a viking longboat and with glow in the dark inlays. More viking metal bands to Australia please!

After an extended changeover, the trippy backdrop behind the stage meant only one thing, Cynic were up next. Playing a few tracks from the latest ‘Traced In Air’ album as well as some older tunes from 1993’s classic ‘Focus’ album, including the instrumental ‘Textures’, Cynic displayed flawless technicality, massive atmosphere, touching melodies, and excellent mixtures of clean and growled vocals. Regular passages between songs spoke of the inner workings of the brain, and continuous crazy designs fled through the moving backdrop, but perhaps the craziest of thing of all was the slow-motion headbanging on stage, never seen anything like that before..  “We hope you enjoyed the journey tonight”… we sure did.

Not having much previous knowledge of Edguy, I wasn’t too sure what to expect. These guys ran onto the stage with so much happiness and so much bad hair that I couldn’t help but giggle. The bass played looked like an over-excited emu, bless his heart. After a few minutes I found myself thoroughly enjoying the show and grinned along with all of the band, their enthusiasm is huge. Not sure of the setlist, but their rockin power metal was loud, catchy, and musically proficient that I’d look forward to seeing them again.

Not the hugest turnout at Capitol, maybe due to the Thursday night, maybe due to the entry price, maybe due to the mixed-genre lineup, but nonetheless it was a terrific gig with three top class international metal acts.

Reviewed by Cabba