Live: Apocalyptica in Lucky, Rijssen
At the end of their tour, Apocalytica’s last club performance before their big break takes place in the Netherlands. To be more specific: in Rijssen a small Christian village in the middle of almost nowhere. I would do almost anything for this band. So, after some hours spent on the train, I arrived at Lucky’s.
From the outside Lucky looks like a squash hall, but on the inside venue was very ‘petit’ and cosy. No entrance fee, no paying for leaving your bag or coat; fantastic! The room would fit about 1200 people with the balcony open (closed today), but as the concert wasn’t entirely sold out, there was quite some space for everyone. We found ourselves an amazing spot to watch the gig and waited.
Band & music
As you can see on the setlist, Apocalyptica opened with the Metallica cover One, which isn’t the best track to start with. Due to this, and the poor sound quality the first few minutes, they started weak. The upside of this is that the drummer’s entrance was spectacular. Mikko Sirén proved that adding him to the band really makes all the difference and give Apocalyptica a much more powerful sound.
Including the two encores, Apocalyptica played nineteen tracks in about one hour and twenty five minutes. Among these tracks they played their new single Repressed. It was very apparent that the crowd was new to this one, but it was well received. Among the tracks were of course more Metallica covers, with Seek and Destroy as highlight of the party and opener of the first encore! A different setlist than that of the three gigs I visited last year was refreshing, but maybe it is time to drop Quutamo and Bittersweet as well and replace it with two other ballads, because these two are beginning to get pretty boring. Talking about tracks, Hall of the Mountain King was a part of the setlist as it always is, but this time they were playing it even faster than usual! I never imagined it possible, but at some point Perttu Kivilaakso made it almost impossible to hear the different notes!
On stage the bandmembers were messing with each other. Even the normally straight faced Antero Manninen was grinning and smiling as if his life depended on it during the entire show! They were really playing with the crowd, especially Paavo Lötjönen, as this reviewer and The Bullet Reviews owner and maintainer have once again experienced to the full! The [local] crowd was great! More different ages then the usual mostly fifteen year olds, who probably couldn’t travel that far. The crowd reacted like crazy on the band with head banging and clapping. The latter being kind of annoying after a while actually.
Verdict: Even though the start wasn’t all that, and some mistakes were made during the gig, it was once again amazing. Unfortunately, this was the last club gig before their well deserved big break and writing a new album. I can hardly wait!
Pictures of previous Apocalyptica gigs are here.