| HELLOWEEN + BLAZE |
March 27, 2001 |
MADRID |
Helloween are on tour again and, yes,
I was there at La Riviera. The gig was set to start at 9:00 but I came there early
(something like 6 PM). Once again the experience was very nice. This was the third time
I saw Helloween performing (twice before in big venues as support act) and this was
the best performance I've seen, I must say. At all the other gigs I had the feeling
they were just playing their songs. Maybe it had something to do with the venue:
this time it's small and there's always a good atmosphere. And this time they played as
headliners.
At 8:15 PM the doors opened. Opening the show was BLAZE,
a new act that features Blaze Bayley (ex-Iron Maiden). They started their show at 9:00 PM.
I just wish that everybody could witness their undeniable strength!! Bayley fronted Wolfbane
between 1989 and 1995 and then replaced Bruce Dickinson in Iron Maiden for 5 years.
Now he is fronting this band simply called Blaze and has released a first album called
"Silicon Messiah". They presented their new songs such as: "Ghost In The Machine",
"Identity", "The Brave", "Silicon Messiah", "Born As A Stranger"... and they did three
songs by Iron Maiden as well ("Futureal", "When Two Worlds Collide" -both from "Virtual XI"-
and "Man On The Edge" from "The X Factor"). With every song the atmosphere began to
heat up and the crowd was getting bigger and bigger with every minute. Blaze is an
excellent frontman and the rest of the band did a good job as well (Steve Wray and
John Slater were fantastic on the guitars). Bayley had a lot of crowd
interaction and was moving like hell all the time. I can honestly say that this guy
surpassed himself, sounding better than at any other point in his career.
By the end of their 45-minutes act, the crowd was so into them that they gave the band
a splendid ovation. To sum up, it was the perfect introduction for the helloweeners...
HELLOWEEN took the stage (actually they
had a cool setting: good lightning and a giant pumpkin in the back (the one from the
cover of the new album) at exactly 10:10-15 PM. The intro tape started ("Beyond The Portal"
from the new album), which was pretty cool. Now the crowd which was inside the venue was huge.
Andi Deris was the last to get on stage but when he did the band inmediately started with
"Power" from the album "The Time of the Oath". They played a bunch of songs from the latest
album "The Dark Ride" but, of course, there was space for the old classics as well.
The audience seemed to love virtually every song Helloween performed, from the Keeper
classic "Eagle Fly Free" to the newest songs such as "Mirror, Mirror" and
"The Departed (Sun is Going Down)". The list of hits kept flowing with, among others,
"I Live For Your Pain", "Escalation 666", "Dr. Stein", "Future World", "Mr. Torture"
(this song was one of my highlights of the night, cause it’s my favorite song in
"The Dark Ride"), "I Want Out" (almost worth the ticket price alone), "Revelations",
"Steel Tormentor", "The Dark Ride"... The fans went crazy especially when the band
played their classics "Future World" and "I Want Out"... of course, everyone knew the
lyrics to these songs, sang louder than hell and air guitared every solo 
After an hour and a half of playing, Helloween left the stage. The hooting began and
the crowd chanted: "Happy happy Helloween, Helloween, Helloween... Happy happy Helloween,
ooh ooh ooh!" And then the encores began! The first encore was "Perfect Gentleman"
from the album "Master of the Rings". During this song, Andi Deris went into the game
of "which side is louder?"... it was pretty funny. Andi enjoyed every second of the
perfomance... he just couldn't wipe the smile off his face 
as the same goes for
the whole band who had fun on stage. They played the last song and thanked the crowd
for their great support and after the well-known drumsticks and pick throwing-act the
band left the stage. When I say that I got my money's worth, I definitely did, and I
believe that everyone else did too. I can say that they are a band that I will go
to see over and over again. Pumpkins still rule!! -Review & photos by Marina-
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