On Friday evening I had the luck to visit one of my favourite Finnish metal band, called Apocalyptica and had the opportunity to check them out live. I arrived at the gates at around half past seven; the entrance was super easy and the manager of the band told me rules about photoshooting - when, how, for how long – and then the staff showed me where to sit. I’ve found my seat and got prepared for the show. 

A few minutes after 8, the quartet appeared on the stage in the middle of a massive lightbeam. The whole hall was filled with chairs. It’s important to know that the spine of this music is based on classical and is filled with powerful metal, so our far away relatives started with a hot and heavy Metallica cover ("Enter Sandman"). To tell you the truth, the whole concert was built on the Metallica songs, because it was a tour of the "20 years of ' Plays Metallica by Four Chellos'". Lengthy intros, prolonged outros; really the whole show was world-class. Soon enough "Sad But True" came on, as well as "Harvester Of Sorrow", "Creeping Death" and the first section came to an end with "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)". During the first three songs I was allowed to take photos from the sides of the stage (not from the front) and without flash. I tried to find all the good angles, then I took my place on my chair and solely payed attention to the music. It was very carefully composed, highly deliberate professional work. The first part of the show was nearly an hour long, followed by a 20 minute break. Right after the intermission the audience came back and the second section kicked off.

For my greatest joy, they started with my absolutely favourite song called "Fade To Black", followed by "For Whom The Bell Tolls". One of the musicians tried to playfully imitate Robert Trujillo (Bassist of Metallica) whilst playing on his massive instrument. There was a bit more conversation initiated by the band during the second course of the show. They told us stories of the formation of the band, and what has happened to them in the past 20 years. They talked about the Hungarian-Finnish relationship, hence we got some beautiful Hungarian words, such as "Nagyon köszönöm" - Thank you very much - and "Pálinka" – a high abv traditional spirit. As a devoted audience we cheered after every Hungarian word and kept on clapping and whistling for the Hungarian speaking Finnish musician. After the song "Seek And Destroy" they said goodbye and walked off of the stage – at which point everyone was standing exactly in front of the stage. The band made us stand up; everyone was shaking their heads, raising their fists in the air, grabbing their metal forks out of their pockets and all the usual stuff that normally happens at a rock concert. A very heavy applause preceded the last song, which made the band come back on stage for two more songs. The second to last song was the very famous Metallica ballad called "Nothing Else Matters". The people around sang along the entire song just like James Hetfield would  - or at least tried to. At the very end of the show they played one of the most emotional songs called "One". Before that they turned our attention to not make war, to respect and love each other and to try to help others.

Overall, they played for nearly two hours and I’m almost certain that the hall was nearly full. Everyone seemed to have gotten very nice memories from this night.  By the end of Apocalyptica’s special and wonderful show, even the clean gentlemen wearing their white shirts tucked in were jumping all over, got up and left their seat to put their fists in the air. 

The songs that were played at the show were:

1. section:

01. Enter Sandman
02. Master of Puppets
03. Harvester of Sorrow
04. The Unforgiven
05. Sad but True
06. Creeping Death
07. Wherever I May Roam
08. Welcome Home (Sanitarium)


2. section:

09. Fade to Black
10. For Whom the Bell Tolls
11. Fight Fire With Fire
12. Until It Sleeps
13. Orion
14. Escape
15. Battery
16. Seek & Destroy

Encore:

17. Nothing Else Matters
18. One

If you click on this last photo, you can have the whole gallery:

To check out the whole gallery, click here, to watch it on FB!