The first stop in our road trip across the country was at Denver, CO, so we tweaked our travel dates in order to make it to this magnificent show that offered us the opportunity to watch some great bands in a small venue, something that probably will not happen in the future.

While we are followers of Hatesphere, Augury and Obscura, we never cared much for The Black Dahlia Murder and their Death-core music. So we basically attended this show for the foreign talent.

Taking advantage of the long President’s day weekend, we made it out of our snow caves in Montana in order to attend Epica’s show in Seattle, WA. After a grueling 11 hr ride we arrived in Seattle a day before the show.

The show was set to be at El Corazon, a venue that might appear not very big but surprisingly the capacity is around 800 people. We have been to shows before in this place and never seen it very full, most notably during the amazing show that Amorphis played here back in 2008.

With Full Force 2009 – July 3, 4 and 5 2009, Löbnitz, Germany

After a very long and amazing trip to Europe our last stop was the 2009 With Full Force festival.

After a great Dream Theater and Cynic concert in Prague, Czech Republic I headed back to my rest spot in Prague and got my stuff ready to wakeup early and take the train to Dresden, Germany for some sight seeing on the way to my final destination of the day: Leipzig, Germany.

Day 1: Friday, May 29

Location: Kohlrabizirkus

15:30 Unsun

I was very excited to find out that Montana was going to get a real metal show. This meant that I did not need to drive more than 10 hrs to go to a show. The drive this time was only 6 hrs round trip and they where well invested.

Having heard that Dragonforce is known for giving bad live performances I was skeptical about this one, but I was not going to let the opportunity to find for my self if this is true. And you will read through to know how their performance was.

If you have never been to The Launch Pad in Albuquerque, you probably wouldn’t understand the unique environment the venue presents for concerts. The venue consists of a bar front, a loft (21+) and a main floor with a small stage in back for the bands. House capacity is around 300 people, so whomever you’re going to see, you know it will be an intimate experience with the bands. The Pagan Knights Tour was an excellent example of this band-to-fan interface.

Note: This is part of the Tuska Open Air - March 2009 Feature, so you can read the whole thing here

Today’s decision was also very hard to make, since I really wanted to go and watch Before The Dawn perform. But like the previous day, 1 vs. 3 bands made me go for the ‘bigger bang for the buck’ and I picked the show at Nosturi.

Note: This is part of the Tuska Open Air - March 2009 Feature, so you can read the whole thing here

Note: This is part of the Tuska Open Air - March 2009 Feature, so you can read the whole thing here

After a long first day in Helsinki (we arrived back to our hotel at 3:30 in the morning), we decided to sleep until late and recuperate our energy for the first day of Tuska. We woke up a bit late and went to walk around downtown Helsinki and do some shopping in some stores downtown. We also found a place to eat in the outdoor market next to the ferry/cruise ship arrival area. The food there was pretty good and not crazily expensive like in other restaurants around the area.