Moonspell passed by Leipzig for another date of their European tour, and it was an intense show. The opening acts were Eleine and The Foreshadowing.
Eleine, Swedish symphonic gothic metal, were the first band to come upon stage. The crowd was still scarce when they started, maybe due to the fact that they are a young and still almost unknown band. Their performance was mainly focused on their eponymous debut record from 2015, and despite their best efforts, especially from the front woman, the crowd remained somewhat apathetic. They finished their gig with a new single, released this year, “Break Take Life”, a song that seemed to cheer up the audience a little bit, that had started to arrive to see the next band.
Italian band, The Foreshadowing was up next, and the crowd that were scattered upon the room shown that they were familiar with their sound. Performance wise they focused on the several albums of their career, and the set list included some new tracks such as “New Babylon” or “17”. Some of the older ones like “The Forsaken Son”, “Oionos”, “Departure” or “Havoc” were not forgotten. Overall it was a great show from this gothic/doom metal quintet, which had a warm welcome from the crowd.
Moonspell – what shall we say about them? First of all, it’s important to notice that despite it was an amazing show, like always, this Portuguese group shown a few signs of exhaustion, maybe because it was one of their last shows for this tour. They completely delivered it, and the audience responded effusively, especially in their oldest and better known tracks. Since it was the tour dedicated to their latest release “Extinct”, they kicked off the show with two songs from that record, “Breathe” followed by the title-track “Extinct”.
After the third song, “Night Eternal” the frontman and singer Fernando Ribeiro announced that their iconic record “Irreligious” is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, so to honour that they played some tracks from that album, such as “Opium”, “Awake”, “Ruin and Misery” and “Herr Spiegelmann”. There was still some time left for some tracks taken from “Night Eternal” and a special participation by the young singer from Eleine to share the stage with Moonspell for the”Scorpion Flower” song. Some classics such as “Vampiria” , “Ataegina” (the bonus track completely sang in Portuguese)or “Alma Mater”, from “Wolfheart” were not forgotten, thus ending the regular time show. In the end, there was still time for an encore, where they played the tracks “Everything Invaded”, “The Future is Dark” and the never forgotten “Full Moon Madness” for the closure of the show. Although the venue was only in maybe three quarters of its capacity, it was a really interesting show, which fully satisfied those who got the chance to be there, given their smiles on the way out.
Words and photos by: João Osório
Comments are closed.