Written by:	Ivor
Published:	November 13, 2010
Event:	Lordi
Location:	Rock Cafe, Tallinn, Estonia
Galleries:	Lordi - Rock Cafe, Tallinn, Estonia, 08.11.2010 by Ivor (30)

The music before and between the bands was way superior to what followed later. This is the first time this has happened to me. No, really. Okay, what else do you expect when two prog fans walk into a hard-rock concert and find Dream Theater live album playing in-between? Especially if it's Awake material. Damn right you enjoy it! But I digress...





There's not much and nothing good to say about the warm-up band called Sister Sin. This female fronted hard rock outfit from Sweden really knows how to be boring in most aspects of their performance. I was particularly annoyed by the vocals which were the exact hard-rockish type I dislike no matter if they are male or female. The music itself was also pretty much generic. If the sound level had been lower, it would have passed as being perfect bar music, something you wouldn't get annoyed by when you are making the most out of your dialogue with beer. But as such was not the case, beer had to be drowned wordlessly in anticipation of inevitable end of the performance.





However, and to be perfectly honest, Lordi gig was quite an enjoyable event on its own for various reasons. And don't try to tell me you hate this band and it's unhip to favour them. You've got to give them credit for reaching an enormous non (hard) rock oriented audience in the recent past. Winning Eurovision Song Contest was quite a feat. Which brings me to one of the reasons this event was fun. Because of this you could see all kinds of people at this show, it almost looked like a zoo in terms of possible and impossible diversity. I mean, older short-haired blond man, pink sweater and creased breaches at a rock concert? Or girls that looked like they walked into a nightclub? But then again why not? It also looked very much like a kindergarten family event due to all those children out there with their parents, little ones quite possibly seeing their first such concert ever.





As fun as the crowd was, Lordi themselves were also fun on stage. Although they sometimes look quite clumsy in their monster outfits, they do know how to put it all to good use and fill the show with theatrics featuring a buzz saw and a smoking skull amongst others. On the whole it's not as elaborate and decorous as, say, a big Alice Cooper show, and given the size of this particular event such thing probably wouldn't be feasible, but it still created a bit of an anticipation atmosphere with a constant question what next. Ten times as big event would probably benefit from an additional pyrotechnical bang, no doubt. So, visually this was pretty decent thing to watch.

I must admit I don't know much of Lordi's music for, I might say, quite obvious reasons. It's not exactly the stuff you want to listen to everyday as getting bored of it is it's main quality trait. It is fun once in a while, though, and for that very reason I've heard some songs here and there and even took my time to listen to their latest album Babez For Breakfast, title track of which also kicked off the show. Because my Set-List-O-Matic shamefully pulled a no-cooperation on me, I'm not able to figure out which songs were played during the evening, but looking at the discography more or less every album was present. The show obviously climaxed with "Hard Rock Hallelujah," being now their most known song. But to my surprise that one was not the last one for the evening, "Would You Love A Monsterman?" wrapped the show up rather nicely instead.





The biggest disappointment of the shows held at Rock Cafe is the sound level. It's unbelievably loud, which is a shame and makes me sad. All the more so because of the kids with irresponsible parents who are ignorant enough to let them wander around without earplugs. But this is on the whole a futile battle, as the venue has a sign stating that sound levels won't be lowered and if bothered people should buy earplugs.





To wrap up, I have to say that this sort of family event left a decent enough impression. As far as my tastes are concerned, it might be because of the uncommon draught season when good gigs are few. But I have a feeling it's something else. Maybe it's the sight of young following growing up? Or maybe because Lordi gig is a safe gig enough to attract people from wider audience and, who knows, maybe set them on the better path. In any case, in all their silliness Lordi is good enough to check out once.