Poets of the Fall – Assembly (Hartwall Areena), Helsinki; August 2nd, 2012
Going to a Poets of the Fall concert in Helsinki, one usually knows what to expect: A home crowd, a fun gig and maybe, possibly some special treat. Not so this time. Of course the gig was great and fun too, but the audience was certainly not the usual one. The gig took place at Assembly, a yearly computer festival. Now I like my computer, but I don’t even understand the lingo they use on their website, much less what they do there. Apparently there’s gaming going on, but also competitions, seminars, demos… and concerts (or one anyway).
A., S. and I met early because we wanted to take a look around before the gig. We did and after about 5 minutes I got confirmation for what I had only guessed beforehand. I felt totally out of place. Seeing the dozens and dozens of computer screens in the main hall and the people in front of them I felt as if I had landed on a different planet, unsure if I found this fascinating or scary. Now offense to my computer geek friends, but this was not for me. After walking around twice we realized that a) there wasn’t much for us to see and b) we could have gone there a lot later. Oh well, we sat in the sun for a while and had a nice chat before going back in and we are used to waiting anyway. The things you do for the band you love…
In front of stage we met H. and her friend, but that was all the familiar faces we saw except for the band, crew and cheerios. It puzzles me how the Tavastia and the Virgin Oil sell out way in advance, but as soon as the Poets play a little outside of Helsinki (Vantaa, Espoo, Järvenpää,…) or even at an unusual place in Helsinki, people all of a sudden seem to lose interest and almost none of the regulars show up. Then again, maybe it was just bad timing and everyone was on summer vacation.
The stage was rather large, but a good height to see everyone on there. Two cameras were set up for filming and close to showstart there were lots of photographers too. When I turned around, I also saw many people with dslr cameras behind me. It seemed as if there were more people that came to take pictures than to see the concert. Many of the people in the center of the arena just remained seated at their computers, but around 10 p.m. there was an OK size crowd gathered in front of the stage.
They started a little late. An announcer said some words about Captain having a history with Assembly and the games the guys had made music for. He left stage and the intro started, but it sounded like ‘Locking up the sun’. I was starting to wonder when it stopped and a new intro came on. Not the usual one, but really cool. Through lots of artifical fog they slowly walked on stage. To my surprise Marko was not wearing the top hat and feather boa but a black baseball cap. They started with ‘Kamikaze Love’, but the sound was so bad at the front that I could not understand much of what Marko was singing. When the song was over and he spoke I could not hear that either. It got better around the third song, but we still could not hear much of what he said. I am very grateful to the person who filmed the gig and put it on youTube, because the sound was much better in the back and watching the video I could finally hear what I had been missing. It was great seeing the guys up close again though and if the prize to pay for that was not hearing everything then I was glad to do that.
It was clear that the guys were enjoying themselves. It almost seemed like they could not stop smiling. Especially Captain seemed really happy to be there and sang along to every song. Marko had much room to move, but not much of a chance to step on the boxes in front of the stage, because there were always photographers leaning on those. When ‘Temple of Thought’ started some woman screamed really loud. It was kinda funny, because there was not much noise otherwise. The lighting was really great that night. Just perfect for taking pictures.
Before starting ‘Roses’ Marko asked us how we were doing and then asked he people in the back too. People cheered so not everyone was concentrating on their computer after all. “This is a story about how life is like dancing on roses,” he announced. And dance he did, all across the stage. 🙂 He also spent quite some time squatting in front of us and later stood next to Captain for a while. Ollie’s solo was awesome. I wished I could have watched that from up close.
Jani moved about on stage a lot, playing with everyone in turn. Marko spent quite some time on his knees or rolling around on stage. Jaska often sat down on the drum platform and was joined by some of the others at times. It looked quite comfortable. For ‘Stay’ Ollie finally came over to center stage for a bit to play his solo. Marko decided to lie down and slip half through Ollie’s legs. Ollie, without missing a beat, set down and Marko, along with much of the front row, cracked up laughing.
There were lots of other sweet and funny moments like Jani toasting to my friend M. during ‘Illusion & Dream’ or Marko realizing the mic stand was broken and the mic would not stand up straight any more. ‘Gavity’ was a great, energetic performance with lots of jumping, ‘Late Goodbye’ got lots of cheers from the gamers and ‘Carnival of Rust’ had a very beautiful new intro that I loved. In the end f Lift, before walking off stage, Marko thanked us in several languages. We counted 9: Finnish, English, German, Swedish, Italian, French, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese. 😀
All in all a fun gig. I loved every minute, despite not being able to hear everything. It was just great to see the guys in such a good mood.
POTF summer tour: 5 gigs down, 2 to go. Next stop: Kemi
Setlist
Kamikaze Love
Diamonds for Tears
Temple of Thought
Roses
Cradled in Love
Locking up the Sun
War
The Lie Eternal
Stay
Illusion and Dream
Gravity
Late Goodbye
Encore
Dreaming Wide Awake
Carnival of Rust
Lift