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Leaves Eyes Concert Review
If the commute downtown is as smooth every time as it was this Thanksgiving, I suggest that the metal community schedule shows on holidays more often. The 20 mile stretch of I-90 that usually takes an hour plus to negotiate (on a good day) passed by within half of that, and I arrived at the House of Blues on the Chicago River a half hour before the doors opened. Of course, finding a parking spot ate up almost all the time I’d saved, but nevertheless.
I must say, walking past the entire line of veteran fans who’d been standing in the cold for an hour felt pretty good, but the news at the box office did not. Apparently, they had no information regarding the ‘press conference’ at 6:00, and would simply let me (and the other journalists loitering at the entrance) know when they did. So I stood waiting, watching Twisted Sister on the in-house video network, and sizing up the line of fans as they streamed up the stairs to the second floor venue once the doors officially opened. They were distinctly more European in style and taste than I am used to, which is nice, for a change. Of course, there were plenty of regular American types, and the odd Gothic monstrosity, draped in leather and make-up along with the completely unclassifiable lifestyle aberrations. A good crowd, really.
After half an hour, and after pursuing this supposed ‘press conference’ from employee to employee, they ushered me upstairs to find the merch guy, Woody, in hopes that he had more useful information. He was, unsurprisingly, busy beyond belief with a line for Blind Guardian merchandise around the corner. After a moment or two of deliberation, I was spared a decision; the lights went down, the smoke started spouting, and the crowd pressed in for opening group Leaves’ Eyes.
While shooting from the pit, it became impossible to ignore the similarities between Leaves’ Eyes and Nightwish. Now, while I was of course aware of them beforehand, seeing Liv Krull in her formal get-up and listening to 45 minutes of their gothic hard rock cemented their status as trumped up cover band permanently in my mind. Other groups like Epica may also fit into this category, but few are as identical in their approach as Leaves’ Eyes is to Nightwish.
Liv herself has a rather ethereal voice on record, and the live setting full of thick guitars and a cheering audience makes her sound even more subdued. If Alexander, the lead male vocalist (and her husband, interestingly) had not made appearances throughout the set to liven things up, I think the crowd’s enthusiasm might have tapered off. He would charge from side to side headbanging ferociously, his thigh-length hair long enough to hit the front row of the audience. Of course, the fact that he’s massively tall probably helps his reach as well, but even so. His growling voice is a passable one that relies much on the studio setting for its strength, so during their set sometimes his parts would come out rather weakly, but his sheer size and presence were enough to (at least partially) galvanize the crowd.
In between songs, he introduced the band and said to the audience that they were here to give a big, ‘Fuck you!’ to the skeptics of America’s metal scene. Ironically, the crowd’s reply to this was rather tepid, particularly so for how packed the venue was. Standing from the raised side bar, I could see hardly an empty spot on the main floor, back bar, standing room, or even the balconies above. I chalked this weak reply up to Americans being Americans, but looking back now with the perspective of their later enthusiasm, it’s more likely that they were distracted or simply underwhelmed.
The most interesting aspect of their set was the strange slap technique of their (Transylvanian) bassist. He wore a silver thumb ring and, from what I could see, did not pluck a single string, instead slapping every single note that he played, sometimes including little runs up the neck and fretting the strings in an over/under the neck style that really displayed a serious talent shackled by Leaves’ Eyes rather mediocre (if fun for what it is) songwriting.
Forty-five minutes and they were through. Liv thanked us ‘from the bottom of her heart’, which was appreciated, and then added, ‘My heart belongs to you,’ which is where the border between appreciation and insincerity was crossed, I think. Some others in the crowd didn’t seem to take her too seriously either, but we gave them respectful applause nonetheless.
Blind Guardian’s stage set up took no more than 10 minutes and was run with great professionalism. A few techies cleared the additional amps, leaving the stage almost entirely bare, and we sat through another 20 minutes of Van Halen over the speakers. This at first seemed a little odd, but considering that Blind Guardian have been around for a while anyway and Andre Olbrich’s guitar sound is comparable to Van Halen’s, it ended up being an appropriate warm-up.
At almost exactly 8:00, the lights went down again and the sounds of battle and clashing swords came through the speakers. A haggard voice soon overtook it, and we recognized ‘War of Wrath’, the opening interlude to ‘Nightfall in Middle-Earth’. The crowd was howling at this point and speaking the words of the interlude as they came. In the final seconds of the track, the backing members (touring bassist and keyboardist) walked out, followed by new drummer Frederik, and then finally Marcus, Andre, and Hansi, quickly launching ‘Into the Storm’.
I had seen footage of Hansi on DVD, and had been a little unimpressed by how he would stare out at the audience with eyes wide and stroll from side to side doing little else. And, while he did essentially the same thing this night, it did not seem anticlimactic at all. The band, dressed like average guys and certainly not glamorized for the show, managed to live up to their majestic sound but still seem like nothing more than a handful of particularly talented Germans who happened to pick up some instruments one day.
After the first few songs of more involved movement, the members gravitated towards their respective spots, while Hansi continued to gesture and strike subtle poses to emphasize the particular lines of each track. Behind them, a video track was projected onto a massive screen that covered the entire rear of the stage. Some of the loops the played were just colors, others pictures taken from album covers, some even full length videos quite similar to what Queensryche are doing nowadays. The unfolding plot to ‘Another Stranger Me’ with its chases and gunfights seemed rather strange next to the burning eye of Sauron during ‘Time Stands Still’, but Blind Guardian presented both themes with so much confidence and ability that it wasn’t confusing or awkward at all to see them transition between the two ‘worlds’, as it were.
Speaking of the set list, although they did play quite a few tracks from ‘Nightfall…’ (including the ‘title track’ as the third song, following ‘Born in a Mourning Hall’) the Lord of the Rings imagery was surprisingly understated. They instead took a rather broad survey from almost all their albums, and not always the ‘hits’ one would expect, which was refreshing.
A few songs into the set was when the solo-heavy tracks really set in. During these sections, Hansi would leave the stage, sometimes still holding a particularly lengthy note, and leave Andre in the spotlight. Andre didn’t do much moving throughout the set, but with leads like his it’s no surprise. His guitar sound was outstanding throughout, for both ballads on the acoustic and the shredding electric solos we all know quite well. Marcus on rhythm guitar was not quite so loud in the mix (and on the other side of the stage from where I ended up), but would now and then join in for harmonies at a song’s climax.
Hansi would sometimes speak to the audience, after the first few songs quipping about it being ‘time for the encores’ so we could get back to our families on Thanksgiving. We, obviously, booed that heartily, and he, obviously, got back to the music with a smile. His stage persona seemed to be hardly a persona at all, just a humble guy who, when we chanted ‘Majesty!’ dozens of times seemed genuinely amused and asked, ‘Why do you want to hear it? There’s no reason...’ But they played it anyway almost as soon as we asked for it and without a hitch. I suspect they had it rehearsed anyway, but the willingness to change their set-list (or at least shuffle it up) at our behest is to their credit.
The first ‘ballad’ came after more than an hour of playing. It was ‘Bright Eyes’, one of many tracks taken from ‘Imaginations…’ which I had not expected. They played it somewhere between the acoustic track from ‘Forgotten Tales’ and the electric original. Other ballads of the set included ‘Skalds and Shadows’ (falsetto and all, which was masterfully done) and ‘The Bard’s Song’, which he actually didn’t sing much of at all. Throughout the entire set, the audience had been singing along with as much gusto and authenticity as I have ever heard at a metal show. Hansi would sometimes let us sing a line, thrusting the mike out towards the audience, and for ‘The Bard’s Song’ he took the earbud out and simply strolled from side to side, singing a line here and there and letting us do the rest. And the response was overwhelming, for this track and others, such as our a capella closing of ‘Valhalla’.
After about 90 minutes, they bid us the first farewell before closing with the 14 minute epic, ‘And Then There Was Silence’, which came off splendidly. Of course, we wouldn’t be put off quite so easily, and after a few chants (‘We want more!’, ‘Guardian!’, ‘Mirror Mirror!’) they came back. Hansi said with another smile, ‘So, you haven’t left! In your case, I would have,’ before starting up the title track of ‘Imaginations…’ ‘The Bard’s Song’ followed, and then ‘Mirror Mirror, ‘the only song that could top ‘The Bard’s Song’, as Hansi put it.
Once they were finally done, once the German flags had been raised someone in the audience, and once the drumsticks and picks were tossed out, they took their final bow and departed to thunderous cheers. The stamping feet of the audience literally shook the floor, and I wondered how much more it would take to take us crashing through the floor down to the ground level of the building.
Trying to choose a single most impressive, or surprising, feature of the show proved impossible, so I finally settled on three. The first: Andre’s guitar was as spot-on and beautiful as ever. The second: Hansi sounded equally grand, even without his horde of backing vocals. Every member in the band except for Frederik (drums) sang, though, which helped considerably, I imagine. The final feature, and I feel the most impressive now that I write it out, was the length of their set: from the first strains of ‘War of Wrath’ to the final chords of ‘Mirror Mirror’, Blind Guardian were playing for almost two entire hours.. Even better, they didn’t show any signs of fatigue, delivering an incredible show from start to finish. This is a feat in itself for a band of any age, much less 21 year veterans. Must be that German beer.
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