Everything finally comes to an end, also this beautiful festival. But before the lights die down it was on Tarja to produce proof of her abilities. The former Nightwish front-woman, now touring solo, showed mainly songs of her debut album “My Winter Storm” like “I Walk Alone”. It was a wide variety of fast and hard songs as well as quiet and emotional ones. Best example for the last one was “If You Believe” during which it was only Tarja on stage sitting behind her clavinova.
We were getting slowly towards the end of the festival and only the two headliners were remaining. First was Doro. I am normally not a real fan of her, although I give her credits for everything she as women did for metal and is representing. This was also thought by the organizer of the festival honoring her with the Award for the most successful career. But the fireworks this little person showed on stage was really impressing me.
She was presenting a cross-section through her works together with Warlock and also of her solo albums. Very impressive her rough voice being so powerful for example during „All We Are“ and on the other side also very emotional like during the goose bumps giving song “Herzblut” which she was partially singing in French.
This acoustic set should be a „Thank you!“ to the fans after the German/Norwegian band had successfully recorded their DVD at the Metal Female Voices Fest one year ago (and received the MFVF Award for the best DVD just before their show). It was only a short gig and unfortunately accompanied by the preparation of the stage for the upcoming show of Doro, but nevertheless it was gorgeous.
After the crowd already heated up during Van Canto, this was even increased by the now following gig. The Norwegian Trail Of Tears were crazy about getting their show started. There were no doubts about that when lead singer Ronny Thorson stormed out onto the stage and began immediately really aggressive with „Once Kissed By The Serpent (Twice Bitten By Truth)”. He was followed by front singer Catherine Paulsen who is in no way inferior to him with her rock style voice.
After hard note and powerful guitars of Darzamat there was now a really hard cut. You could get the impression that Van Canto had forgotten their instruments because there was nothing on stage except the drums. But that is typical for them, because except the drums all instruments are formed vocally (and with a little support of guitar effect generators).
The second Polish band after Unsun on this festival was Darzamat. But in contrast to the quiet and nice metal that Unsun plays the audience was offered hard black metal. Just as Deadlock the singing was distributed between growler Rafal „Flauros“ Goral, taking the larger part, and Agnieszka „Nera“ Gorecka that was responsible for the more melodic parts.
Before the festival, I knew Stream Of Passion only through Last.fm. Despite that, I was already looking forward to the gig of the Dutch with their Mexican lead singer and violinist Marcela Bovio. Originally started as a music project of Arjen Lucassen they were able to establish themselves independently in the meantime.
The second German band of the day was Deadlock. Their music is a mixture between classical and death metal where growler Johannes Prem and lead singer Sabine Weniger alternate. The synthie-sounds supported songs were fast, loud and straightforward. Especially through front singer Johannes, the excessive energy of the band spilled over to the audience immediately increasing the atmosphere minute by minute.
Just like To-Mera, also Lahannya was from the United Kingdom. The band is named after its lead singer and playing doomy industrial-gothic. The most eye-catching and remarkable fact was to my opinion only Lahannya’s outfit.
After the opener of the day To-Mera it was up to the German band Coronatus to continue. They had with Lisa Lasch a replacement for Ada Fletcher on the rock-music style voice and with bassist Todd Goldfinger was also this instrument played by a new band lid. The operatic voice counterpart of Lisa Lasch is formed by Carmen Lorch.
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