Event:	Evergrey: Eastern Europe Tour
Written by:	iaberis
Published:	17.01.2007

Evergrey came in Greece for one and only one concert in Larissa. It was their first appearance here again after four whole years. This time, they preferred a place in Central Greece: Thessaly. I like this idea because I want to see bands visiting other places apart from Athens and giving more people the chance to watch them.

The concert was scheduled on Sunday 14.01.2007 in the club "B Live Music House" where usually rock and metal concerts are hosted. The place is not very big, the capacity is around 200 people and I don't really know why the band chose this place for their concert, since the place was very small for the amount of fans they have in Greece. There were fans of them from all over Greece and even if there were remaining tickets before the show, they quickly vanished just before the show started.

The bad signs for the concert started showing themselves from the beginning but I didn't want to understand them since I was in the best mood for the show? Although the club doors were supposed to open for the audience at 20:00, they opened at 20:30, the time the show was originally meant to start? Shortly after at 20:40 the first support band with the name "Innosense" came on stage. It is a local band from Larissa playing atmospheric power metal with progressive elements in the guitars, similar to the sound of Evergrey. The band was really good and it cheered up the audience for the great event. They begun with their song "On And On" and ended also with their song "The Fall" both from their demo CD "Life" which was available for sale in the club. They were on stage for around 40 minutes, playing mostly cover songs from other bands. I'm surely going to have this band in mind, since they have many good things to offer to the metal scene of the country. Their demo CD, although recorded during the summer of 2006, it was only printed one day before the concert! In my opinion their live sound was far better than the one in their demo. I was so impressed form the band's performance and mostly by their vocalist, that I asked them to sign their demo after the concert! After a short chat with them, they also revealed to me that they're again in the studio to record four new, more progressive songs.




"Stonegard" was the next support band which came on stage on 21:30. This Norwegian band is Evergrey's official support which follow them in all concerts of this tour. I truly can't understand why they chose this band for their support. Their "thrashy" sound is so different that it doesn't fit with Evergrey's style. Apart from that, "Stonegard" suck so much on stage that are truly unrecognizable from their studio sound! I don't know if the sound mixing was so bad in the club, but the only thing I could hear there was some guitars and some drums, without rhythm or melodies. The vocals were lost in this noise making the experience unbearable. Although the band was on stage for only 30 minutes they changed the guitars somewhere in the middle without any changes in their sound! Furthermore the band members were such posers - that irritated me even more! What's the point of playing the guitar above your head when the only thing you can produce is just some noise? Not to mention that the singer was a lisper!!! I really don't want to write such bad things about the band but they absolutely deserve it! And that's not only my idea! Although the majority of the audience cheered them at the end, there were many people that "booed" them both during their show and after it. Their stage appearance was awful but for that it's not the band to blame, at least not totally! The stage was so small that they didn't have much space to place their skull banners, so they put them behind the amplifiers!!!




To make things even worst, a big break followed their appearance. Due to endless technical problems Evergrey came on stage with a delay of 40 minutes! The ones to blame are the club and the organizer company of this concert. It wasn't very pleasant for the audience to stand in a crowded small place for 40 minutes without any music or an official explanation. We watched the projector having three restarts, the one after the other for God's sake! For a situation like that, the spirits remained too calm, with only some "boos" and "hisses" - probably due to the many female presences among the crowd!




Finally, Evergrey came on stage at 22:40! Although their sound wasn't the best at the beginning (vocals were again too low) the band cheered up the crowd. Beginning with songs like "Blinded" and "A Touch Of Blessing" the audience easily forgot the whole mess and started singing along with the band from the very first song! Unfortunately Tom S. Englund, wasn't at his best, since he confessed us that he had to get an injection to his ass to be able to sing! I guess moving in trailers in Balkan roads can be dangerous! The band's performance was very good and that pleased the spectators which were singing most of the time. The band tried to cheer them more every time with jokes and funny stuff! The dialogue between them and the audience was constant and the crowd recognized that. The many breaks the band took though, tired even more the audience. The result was that close to the end of the concert, the crowd was so "dead" that even the man who was selling T-Shirts tried to cheer them up! The band generally played many songs from all over their career, even from their new album, but I'm not so sure if that meant it was from the upcoming or "Monday Morning Apocalypse."




The thing that drew my attention was the contact the band had with their fans. Every now and then, during the breaks or even during the songs, they had small chats with their fans. They didn't refuse to play songs the people asked for and although very tired, they played till 23:40! Some of the funny moments were when Englund and Danhage tried to create animals with the shadows of their hands from the projector's light! Also another funny moment was when Danhage chatted with a fan about sex! At the end of the show, the fans were so pleased that they started yelling altogether the name of the band "Evergrey, Evergrey?!" The band responded with applause. Also after the show, the band singed autographs for their fans and had once again conversations with their fans. So generally, if you dismiss the bad organizing, it was a very pleasant concert?