TARJA TURUNEN: Concert review from Arena Muzika by radiotangra.com

TARJA TURUNEN, Kings of Modesty, Furnaze
ARENA MUZIKA 2009
12.10.2009, Universiada hall, Sofia - Bulgaria

words by: Nikola Shahpazov, photo: Georgi Georgiev

It’s hard, nearly impossible to say a Tarja Turunen gig unpleasant. Despite of the inherent negativity in metal (ever since the first seconds of War Pigs and the satanic poetry of Black Sabbath), this concert had more Scandinavian smiles than a 1974 ABBA live as well as constant clapping, messages of love and peace and a teddybear landing into the loving arms of Tarja herself. Being the cynical music journalists that we are, we could but watch all this happening not being able to join in the goth metal celebrations so we analyzed instead:

1. The Bulgarian audience adores Tarja and would be in love with Nightwish forever, their hunger for pompous, symphonic, opera-like gothic metal being quite obvious. Universiada hall is bursting with the enthusiasm of 4 thousand people making it absolutely incomprehensible why there are virtually no gothic metal events in Sofia not to mention any such local bands.

2. The Bulgarian fans are quite tolerant and somehow manage to cheer through the rather apathetic sets of Kings of Modesty and Furnaze – both warm-up bands playing ultra loud and just as clichéd heavy metal with hard rock undertones. For some unknown reason the Bulgarian-Finnish flag that Kings of Modesty bring up the stage wins them heavy applauses, go figure.

Read the entire review at this location.