With the great love Lunah holds for Moonspell (yeah yeah, I like them very much as well), there was no way we'd miss this show. I mean, a headlining gig in our hometown, do you know how rare a treat this is? Very, very rare, I can tell you that much!

“Get ready for a return to the past!”
- Fernando Ribeiro (vocals)

To be honest, I was a little worried about Copenhagen’s support for this show – even though we were in the small hall of Pumpehuset, which is very small, the floor had only been about half filled during Dagoba’s support gig moments earlier. My worries were put to shame however, because as soon as Moonspell’s intro music began playing, and the lights went down, people emerged from the shadows, the toilets, the bottom of beer glasses, or wherever the heck they had been hiding up to this point, and even though we didn’t reach full capacity, it was still a vast improvement!
Another issue with playing in the small hall was that the band could barely fit on the small stage with all the equipment they had! Sure, the huge devil horns that ornamented the drumkit, and the faux organ pipes for the keyboard may have looked great, but they didn’t leave much room for the quintet to move about. Maybe this was the reason why Pedro Paixão stayed behind the keyboard through the entire show, as contrary to donning a guitar once in a while, which he has been known to do in the past.

Either way, the band was clearly loaded up on evil energy, and ready to bring down the house around us like a pack of hungry wolves. Ribeiro was quite theatrical in his performance, like he is at his best, and Aries Pereira was grooving away on his side of the sage while Ricardo Amorim was heavily headbanging on his. Poor Miguel Gaspar was sweating like a dog on the other hand – small venue + good vibe = lots of heat!
Moonspell actually managed a guest appearance as well, as Jaded Star (the other support band) front woman Maxi Nil took the stage with the band in Scorpion Flower. I was happy to see that she did a good job of it, and this was so much better than the times Moonspell has gone with a pre-recorded version of Anneke van Giersbergen’s. I love van Giersbergen as much as the next man, and there is no vocalist like her, but I prefer a live show to be, well, live.

As this tour was promoting the new album, Extinct, there were of course an overwhelming amount of songs from this album played, but that’s quite alright with us, because we both like it very much. Lunah Lauridsen and I that is, if you were wondering.
Other than Extinct, most of the weight was given to Wolfheart and Irreligious, which suits us just fine as well. The band even had a special, off the setlist, treat for us, as they put the fun and folky Ataegina in before Alma Mater. An awesome decision if you ask me; I certainly hadn’t expected to hear this live, and I’ve always wondered why this folky style has been all but absent on later Moonspell outings, since they did it so well on the Wolfheart album. It certainly garnered a good response from the crowd as well, who gladly sang along in the ‘la la la’ section.

The Copenhagen crowd was actually responding very well to the show in general. During the support band gigs, things had been a bit slow, but now people were gladly shouting and applauding loudly, and the front at least was headbanging a lot. In general, people acted like they had a very good time, and I suspect they were.
Of course, Moonspell had a lot to offer – the setlist and performance was good, as mentioned earlier, and they also had a few other effects brought along to heighten the experience, like smoke cannons, and a foam-snow machine which was used in The Future Is Dark.
Apart from the aforementioned response, Moonspell’s efforts also paid off in a more material way, as Ribeiro was handed a bottle of something from someone in the crowd at one point. He chose not to drink it immediately, but was pleased enough with its contents that he ordered the rest of the band to keep their hands off it!

It is a bit sad that more of the bands we have at the top of our respective lists don’t drop by more often, because Moonspell showed us beyond doubt that they can rock our world without the need for us to travel the world first to find them. I only hope that the small venue and modest amount of people showing up hasn’t scared them off from future visits – those of us who had shown up certainly did what we could to make the band feel welcome at least!

Setlist:

Breathe (Until We Are No More)
Extinct
Night Eternal
Opium
Awake!
Domina
The Last Of Us
Medusalem
Magdalene
Scorpion Flower (feat. Maxi Nil)
Nocturna
Malignia
Vampiria
Ataegina (bonus track)
Alma Mater
Everything Invaded
The Future Is Dark
Full Moon Madness