Fagerlund's reviews

 

First out were Alcest from France. Fourth time I see them, and they never disappoint. A nice mix of new and old songs this night, even though they had a pretty short set (I think six songs? Maybe seven). Excellent musicianship and a nice opener!

 

 

And then Opeth, for the third time for me this year... and the ninth in total! And actually, for the first time at a venue where I've seen them before (the very first time!). This was the last show of the tour, and you could tell the guys were pretty tired and they made a lot more mistakes than usual... however, when I say that it means that compared to other bands it would probably have been called pretty much flawless... it's just because I'm not used to see them mess up a bit that I noticed the mistakes! On top of this they also had several technical issues... I don't know how many times they had to change guitars in the middle of a song... but to their credit they solved it really well by keeping the song going perhaps making one part a bit longer than it usually is... and basically, if you closed your eyes you'd almost believe they just had made a new rearrangement of the song. Speaking of which, they had a lot of those this time around! Some new little background melodies popping up, and bongo drums for Deliverance and stuff. Quite cool!

And that brings us to the setlist. To my surprise it was actually mostly old songs this time around as well! I would have thought they would play more of the new songs now when the album is out and all, but I think it was only 3 songs in total from the two latest albums! I certainly approve of that! Lots of old classics, even going as far back as Morningrise. Really nice set! And it was almost two and a half hours long! I guess that explains why Alcest got such short one! 

So to summarize, Opeth were being Opeth doing Opeth. So a good evening in other words!