Amorphis is a band I haven’t followed for many years. Elegy was the last album I actively listen to. And I never went to any of their gigs, even though they still play a few older songs in their set. But they now announced a short tour to celebrate the 20 year anniversary of the “Tales of a Thousand Lakes” album where they would play the entire album. Only six dates and mostly in German, but they stepped over the border to play a gig in Tilburg too. So I was curious how it actually turned out.

The special guests of the evening were Avatarium. One of the many bands currently run by Leif Edling. But although I’m quite a fan of Candlemass and Krux, this doesn’t appeal to me on album. The music is too watered down, the riffs are bland, and the female vocals don’t work – they rarely do in metal, doom or otherwise – Mourn and Mystic Charm being some notable exceptions. And live editions didn’t strike a bell either, the only song that was actually good was the opening Moonhorse. The rest was quite blant. And the singer’s outfit reminded my of the brilliant ‘Allo ‘Allo sitcom – The Captain Bertorelli who has feathers on his hat.

Then the stage was turned into the splendid graphic style of Tales from a thousands Lakes. A huge backdrop with the Black Winter Day cover and side panels with the Tales… cover adorned the stages. The intro Thousand Lakes sounded over the PA and the band slowly walked on stage and started Into Hiding. The vocals sounded a bit different as Tomi Koivusaari didn’t handle the vocals, but their current singer Tomi Joutsen, which took time to get used to. But other than that they played it all quite well and tight, so that was a pleasant surprise. As promised they worked through the entire album. Was Tales a blend of death metal and the more progressive metal they later on played. The came back for some pure death metal off their debut album. The intro Karelia was played over the PA and then “The Gathering”, “Sign from the North Side” and even the really old “Vulgar Necrolatry”. Those are really amazing songs and they played them very solidly. Hopefully they’ll do a 25 year anniversary of The Karelian Isthmus is a 2017. At last they came back to play three songs of Elegy, which was a bit of anti-climax. But all in all quite a good gig and better than I expected.