APOCALYPTICA – live in Oslo
- Posted on 26-09-2024
After quite many years of absence from the Oslo venues, the Finnish cello based symphonic metal act APOCALYPTICA have taken over the Rockefeller stage on a September Sunday evening. I have loved each of their live performance that I have previously witnessed – mainly in Finland – and I was glad when the event was announced by Live Nation.
For this tour, they had the British act The Raven Age as support, which often gets promoted as the band of Steve Harris’ son’s band. Guess it’s not a label they will ever get rid of, but it’s definitely not a card they rely on to show off. I wouldn’t have known without reading it and their music and performance is nicely evened out so it doesn’t feel like any of the band members is pushed in front. While not teens, the band still feels young, yet I now know that they got to play on big stages opening for Maiden, and I believe that whatever they learned from the big arenas shows was well applied to more normal sized venue.
The Brits act with a lot of confidence and they are good masters of all the gimmicks that make a show enjoyable. They have fun and tons of charisma, lots of cool melodies delivered with passion and adequate stage show. The crowd enjoyed it and seemed well hooked on the somehow modernized heavy metal delivered by The Raven Age. I added them on my list to check out some more and keep an eye on and I recommend you do too.
During the changeover I got to notice the huge amount of small size stage lights that were placed in a line on the stage for the upcoming Apocalyptica show. You can see them here
Those were rather interesting, never seem lights used like that at a show before and I must admit that the whole light show was delightful. But less strobes please. There’s too much cool stuff out there to still need those annoying strobes anymore, anywhere.
If you never saw Apocalyptica live, you have no idea how impressive it is to watch 3 dudes rocking the huge cellos and not only just playing them at insane speed, but also moving around, and especially moving WHILE playing. The Finns have recently released new compilation of Mtellica cello covers, hence the name of the tour was Apocalyptica: Plays Metallica Vol. 2 Tour 2024. And Metallica they played, and I personally find their shows way more entertaining than the original band’s big concerts.
It’s so awesome that they have to rearrange the songs and sometimes make them more compact to keep the interesting elements alive, as not having vocals can quickly make the slower parts boring. And the Finns figured out which parts to cut and on which to go ape shit. Some of the parts in Battery for example or Master Of Puppets or Seek and Destroy…were simply mental. Combined with the good light show and their great stage presence. The crowd getting to sing along for the famous verses, especially on ballads like Nothing else Matters or One, are really goosebumps moments.
Another goosebump moment was when we were told the story of how the band recorded Unforgiven II for this new Metallica covers album. And that they got the permission from Metallica to use the original Cliff Burton bass recording. That must have been such a special achievement for the Finns and for some reason, that song had an extra dose of charm added to it.
Unrelated to the concert, I hope we soon find a way to disable all video devices in the crowd for the duration of the concerts.
Back to the concert – yes, please more Apocalyptica and such special kind of interpretations with this level of energy and enthusiasm. And professionalism.
For us in Eternal-Terror this show was also special because we had a new photographer to join our team. His photogallery is published here and we think he did an amazing job and hope to have him on board for a long time from now on