One great concert was piled on top of the other this day at Metalfest, where we truly were pampered with top-quality acts. Now the time had come for one of Germany’s finest, Edguy, and only from hearing the Land Of The Miracle piano sound during the soundcheck, I figured this would be a smash hit with the crowd.

Somewhere around there, things went wrong though, and I can’t for the life of me figure out with any certainty what… If I am to come up with a qualified guess, maybe Metalfest just had the wrong type of audience for Edguy, or possibly since they are a German band, they have just been over-exposed lately…
But I’m getting ahead of me.
In front of the stage was what would at a quick glance be conceived as a very large audience, but on closer inspection it held a lot of free space between the people in it, making it very hard to make an accurate judgement of how many were actually there.
The band came on kicking and screaming as we are used to seeing them, and quickly launched into the set with Nobody’s Hero, a fast track to get the party going. Tobias ‘Tobi’ Sammet was all over the stage, making good use of the catwalk among other things, and when it came to the musicians it was the other Tobias, the bassist Tobias ‘Eggi’ Exxel, who stood for the liveliest performance, although it was clear that the entire ensemble was in on the fun.
Well, so far this could be the beginning of just about any of the concerts I have ever seen with Edguy, as they are always one heck of a lively band when it comes to performing in front of a crowd, no matter what the size is. What set this particular show aside from the others was that the audience didn’t really seem to care, and what was even worse (for me at least) was that I didn’t even feel like caring! Correction, I wanted to care, but I simply couldn’t!

Somehow, the connection between the band and the crowd was more or less completely absent from this night at the Dessau airport. As I mentioned, the band was sprinting around and acting much in their normal fashion, but they might as well have been badly crafted puppets on strings for all we on the ground could care.
Was it the choice of songs? No, this was pretty much a standard best of set with lots of songs to sing along to, and to just smile and have fun with.
Was it the technical side then, with lights and sound? No, not that either. The sound wasn’t perfect to be sure, but it was above adequate for this type of gig, and the lights were doing what they do best as well, which is basically to light up the show and make it a bit more festive.
And well, we’ve already established the fact that it wasn’t the band, and if you check out my other reviews from this day, you will know there was nothing wrong with the audience either.
I suppose sometimes it’s just not meant to be...

Luckily, Edguy behaved like the true professionals that they are, they didn’t just pack up and leave but fought on to give us the kind of experience that at least I had come to expect from them.
During Rock Of Cashel the band were rewarded with a somewhat enthusiastic clapping in the acoustic sounding part of the solo, and deciding to build on this, Sammet led us into a “Yeah-Hey” type of sing-along when the song was over. Here I have to admit that regardless of what my usual opinion is on these events, this one certainly managed to wake the crowd up and finally get us in that special party mood that Edguy are so good at providing. Also, now that our throats were obviously warmed up again, Sammet had a request for us, and that was to sing Happy Birthday for Mille (Miland ‘Mille’ Petrozza) when Kreator was up next on the stage. It seems Sammet always tries to pull something like this when the two bands are playing together (I’m thinking about the ‘Ole ole ole’ situation he created at Metalcamp a few years back), and while it is good fun, and successful as well it would later turn out, I still can’t figure out why they never treat the audience to a duet instead/as well. Mysteria would be an ideal idea, but I have never seen them do it even though I have seen them play after each other at several occasions.

“Scream for me Dessau!”
- Tobias Sammet (vocals)

Now that the crowd had been over, Edguy delved even deeper in the trick bag they had brought to the show, and as a short snippet only during Robin Hood, the band played Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son by Iron Maiden, Sammet even ripping of Bruce Dickinson’s famous catch-phrase as they went along.
All of this was met with an ever rising interest and appreciation from the audience, and even though they had started out at an absolute zero, Edguy still managed to pull a sweet feast of fun out of this gig for us as the show came to an end with King Of Fools, in which drummer Felix Bohnke really came alive as he juggled his drumsticks all over the place (that he could reach of course).

Edguy pulled it together and ended on a high note thankfully, and without much care about it had started I was left with only one question when these happy Germans left the stage; whatever happened to Land Of The Miracle?

Setlist:

Nobody’s Hero
The Arcane Guild
Tears Of A Mandrake
Rock Of Cashel
Lavatory Love Machine
Superheroes
Robin Hood (Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son snippet)
Ministry Of Saints
King Of Fools