Minneapolis’s Aesma Daeva apparently serves as the farm league for the European operatic metal scene. Their previous singer, Melissa Ferlaak, was called up to the big leagues a couple years ago to sing with Visions of Atlantis, and their current singer, Lori Lewis, is now doing her rookie season as a huge part of Therion’s live incarnation. I saw the band perform years ago at a Milwaukee Metalfest (the sexiest performance by a female vocalist I’ve ever seen), but the 2007 version is a completely different band. From industrial-tinged avant-garde to symphonic doom, from two guitars and drums to a normal band lineup, and mainman John Prassas bucked the trend and went from short hair to full-length metal-man hair. Their latest album is an easier listen than their previous stuff, and they were smart enough to play all their best songs from it (particularly the ones that have a looping woodwind figure backing them, like “Artemis” and “The Loon”). Nice headbangable epic doom stuff, although for some reason the crowd seemed completely indifferent. Lewis is a hell of a singer (I finally realized she sounds almost exactly like Helena Michaelsen from the first Trail of Tears album, especially in the lower register), but an unfortunately awkward frontwoman. Hint: talk about the song you’re about to play, not the one you just finished! To her credit, she’s one of the only people to actually recognize that The Pearl Room is nowhere near Chicago (“Is there anyone here actually from Mokena?”) They finished with Lewis doing an admirable Kate Bush impression on a cover that probably no one knew (I didn’t recognize it, and I even know some Kate Bush!), and then a Mozart aria that even fewer people knew, but they did finally wake up the crowd a little bit.

Therion came out in the same basic structure as their last time around (four metal guys playing instruments, and four vocalists), but with a vastly different approach. Instead of the “we’re too cool for you” stoic opera singers, this new set of vocalists theatrically stalks the stage and works the crowd. For example, “The Perennial Sophia” featured opera-like romantic play-acting between Snowy Shaw and wild-eyed Katarina, which was only slightly spoiled by Snowy’s inability to resist the reach-around tit-squeeze. Even Lori Lewis was a far more impressive stage presence than she was in her own band (she even looked a lot hotter!) My conspiracy theory is that Therion forces her sandbag her act for Aesma Daeva (“we can’t have you upstaging us, dammit!!”) Being the pros that they are, they performed with all the animation required to reach a 10,000-person crowd, even though they were only playing to a room of only 200-300.

So although the show was really impressive and something I’ve never quite seen before in a metal context, I wasn’t quite feeling it as much this time as I had the last time around. That might be because it wasn’t “the first time” anymore, or more likely, because the stuff from “Gothic Kabbalah” just isn’t that great. But then once they got through the drum solo (yeah, having the two male singers whack a drum made it slightly more interesting, but it’s still a drum solo, ugh), things really took off. Their last six songs are basically unbeatable: “Muspelheim” (great acting!), “…Sodom and Gomorrah” (worth the admission for this song alone), and “Ginnungagap” closed out the normal set, and then “Lemuria” (the best song from those sessions), “Cults of the Shadow” and “To Mega Therion” made for a heck of an encore. Why couldn’t we get the “‘Theli’ played in it’s entirety” set in the US, you jerks?!?

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 27th, 2007 at 10:44 am and is filed under concert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.