02.08.2014 Avantasia

Wacken Open Air XXV

Wacken (Germany)

(Pentax K-5 with Sigma AF 70-200mm 2.8 EX DC APO HSM II)

After Megadeth now well knowns were coming onto the stage. Nearly each year Tobias Samme is guest on Wacken Open Air, once in a while with his own band Edguy and like this evening also with his project Avantasia (although) this should be discontinued some years ago already).
Tobias in each case had again gathered a lot of metal celebrities on stage and so the upcoming two hours were mainly filled with nice melodic metal songs. The start was formed by Pretty Maids singer Ronnie Atkins that sung together with Sammet the songs “Invoke The Machine” of the album “The Mystery Of Time” and “The Scarecrow” of the equally named album. Also the following Bob Catley of Magnum and Michael Kiske were showing that they really have great voices. Completed was the singer ensemble by Amanda Somerville who was also singing in the background choir as well as Eric Martin from Mr. Big.
That was quite solid made music although they were strikingly different compared to what else is played at Wacken Open Air as it was originally concepted as a metal opera and due to that more calm and quite pop. Besides that there were all the speeches of Tobias Sammet who was pointing out that this concert would be broadcasted on television worldwide again and again and made a short visit to the Black Stage animating the waiting Kreator fans to boo for his “pussy-metal”. In the end all involved were introduced epically before with “Sign Of The Corss / The Seven Angels” the end of his set was reached.
During his last gig at Wacken in 2011 Tobias Sammet announced that this would be the last Avantasia show forever. Unfortunately, he has changed his mind and kept his negative habits. On the one hand he was annoying with his numerous large talks being way too long between the songs. The songs itself are too much pop for me and I think that they are not very well fitting to Wacken but never mind. People had a lot of fun and they came in large numbers. Otherwise it was simply a quite solid made show that was a little bit too long in my point of view. Also the mood of the audience was way more quite compared to the other bands of this festival. Due to that I will for sure not watch another gig of Avantasia.