France, Paris - Iced Earth + Annihilator: Wicked European Tour

Was there, and well, ended up disappointed. The show was good but not great... First because I make it to the venue 15 minutes in advance but they had started 30 minutes before the official start, thus I could only see 2 or 3 songs by Turisas (including Rasputin and Battle Metal). I missed the moment when the singer fell on stage
But Turisas were great, the best band that night.

Cause Annihilator's show was no different from the first time i saw them, in MetalWay festival in 2005. Basically, the sound was not perfect (though not bad), but what was worse was that apart from a few songs from the early albums towards the end, the setlist didn't really move me. Just average metal songs to me.

And now Iced Earth. My expectations were high due to Baz Anderson having enjoyed their performance in Wacken when he didn't know them that much. But apart from the first songs of the new album (which is just an ok album to me) and Burning Times I didn't enjoy the setlist. Even "Stormrider" sung by Schaffer was not that good because the sound of his voice was really hurting my ears. Yeah, the sound wasn't perfect for Iced Earth too. One last thing that bothered me all along the show was Tim Owens: sure, he's talented but I don't know why I felt like if he was acting like a good frontman instead of just being a great frontman. Weird.

Not a bad evening but clearly far from a great evening.