“Here comes Pretty Maids, here comes Pretty Maids
Rockin’ all year ‘round
With the lights, and the sounds
Now we’re Christmas bound!”

Yes, ladies and gentlefolks, it’s that time of year again. The time where you throw your chestnuts on the fire, hide the cat under the couch, and head on out to Amager Bio for Pretty Maids’ annual x-mas show!
As you know, we here at Metalmoments love this tradition, and do our best to uphold it every year, but this year it meant an especially hard decision had to be made. You see, there was another highly attractive show playing at the same time, also semi locally – Slayer supported by Anthrax. The two most vital parts of the Big Four. Can you feel that? Hurts, doesn’t it?
Still, Pretty Maids, and their support by Hammerfall won out in the end, and to completely spoil the review, I have to say it was a good choice!

“Copenhagen, are you fresh?! Did Hammerfall give you energy?!”
- Ronnie Atkins (vocals)

Now, where Hammerfall clearly catered to the easy party type with a standard ‘best of’ setlist, Pretty Maids took things in a different direction. They went, at least during the first half of the set, for songs we’ve never or rarely seen played recently, and this created a slightly odd feeling. As recommendable as their effort was, it didn’t provide any real sing-along chances in the beginning of the concert, and me thinks a better way to stitch the set together, while still retaining the same songs, would have been to mix well-known and lesser known material up more, instead of doing only one type first, and the other afterwards.
Still, there’s no complaints about the pure energy the band provided while playing these songs, it was top shelf stuff! Atkins spoke a lot, and I mean A LOT, however, he spoke very quickly, and the sound was sadly not top-notch, so it was often hard or impossible to understand what he said.

All-round, the sound wasn’t as good as we would have hoped for actually. Especially in the beginning, the guitar and bass was rather muddy, and hard to tell apart, and Morten Sandager’s keyboard volume was all over the place, from inaudible to drowning out all the other stuff.
But didn’t I spoil the review by saying this was the right choice to make?
Well, yes I did. And I meant it.
The reason for this was the feeling of the show, which I briefly touched on before.
Before us stood a band that was firing on all cylinders when it came to performance! Atkins and René Shades are always good and very lively to watch, and for this show Ken Hammer was also in the best of moods, and often playing with that horn he had strapped to his microphone stand. Allan Tschicaja was a wild beast.

And it wasn’t that the response from the sold out (yes, even with the competition, Pretty Maids managed to sell out Amager Bio) hall was lacking either. It Comes At Night saw people warming up their hands, applauding along like crazy, and then Final Day Of Innocence, with the aid and guidance of Atkins, helped warm up our voices as well, with a well performed “hey” chant.
The ballad trilogy saw even more singing from the audience’s side, and after this we hit the ‘best of’ section of the set, which, as you can imagine, became an explosion of voices!
Apart from help from the crowd, Atkins was also vocally assisted from another side for a while – Joacim Cans of Hammerfall came in on stage and sang Back To Back together with him, and Pontus Norgren assisted on guitar. Fitting really, as Hammerfall are big fans of Pretty Maids, and have covered this song both on album, and several times live. Surprising perhaps that the entire band didn’t go on stage, but that would have hindered Oscar Dronjak in filming it with his phone from the photopit…

So, yes. Pretty Maids was the way to go for us, and we regret nothing! Hopefully, we’ll be able to check in again next year, and hopefully there won’t be anything else of importance booked at the same time.

Setlist:

The Boys Are Back In Town (Thin Lizzy song)
Deranged
Psycho-Time-Bomb-Planet-Earth
It Comes At Night
Final Day Of Innocence
Another Shot Of Your Love
Rodeo
My Soul To Take
Infinity / Wasted / Savage Heart
Red, Hot And Heavy
Yellow Rain
Pandemonium
Another Brick In The Wall Part 2 (Pink Floyd cover, snippet)
I.N.V.U.
Little Drops Of Heaven
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Carmina Burana) (Carl Orff song)
Back To Back (feat. Joachim Cans, Pontus Norgren)
Mother Of All Lies
I See Ghosts
Please Don’t Leave Me (John Sykes cover)
Future World
A Merry Jingle (The Greedies cover)
Sit On My Face (Monty Python song)