On a mid-autumn night, Sabaton was visiting our fair town, and they had brought some company with them.
First up was the Finnish up-and-coming symphonic metal band known as Thaurorod. I have come to understand that the word means ‘evil mountain’ in one of Tolkien’s fictional elven languages, which in a way makes sense, as Tolkien in his day based his elven languages on Finnish, so I guess you could say we have now come full circle…

This was a side-note however, so let’s move on to the show…
The first thing to catch my eye as I moved into the concert area of Amager Bio was the big bad-ass backdrop depicting the cover for their debut album, Upon Haunted Battlefields, which was created by none other than Ken Kelly (Manowar, Kiss, Rainbow etc.etc.)
On the other hand, the actual stage that Thaurorod had at their disposal was much to write home about. Actually, the stage at Amager Bio is both very wide and very deep, but as most of it was occupied by a special setup Sabaton had brought along, Thaurorod was confined to only use the very front of the stage, even sharing drums with next support-act, Alestorm.

Still, this was probably for the better, as things would turn out.
Even though the audience was already growing pretty big at this point, they had no intention of rocking out to Thaurorod’s hymns, it would seem. Sure, there were a few guys front-and-centre who were rocking, but other than that people mostly stood still and listened.
However, the overly active and intense performance of the band, especially the string benders Emil Pohjalainen and Lasse Nyman (guitars) and Pasi Tanskanen (bass) excelled at this, made it impossible for the gathered crowd to keep their cool. Before long, people were cheering loudly and raising their arms in honour of what they saw and heard. Also Emmi Taipale got some standing ovations (ok, so there were no seats in the hall, but anyway) during her keyboard solo-parts.
Only singer Markku Kuikka and drummer Joonas Pykälä-aho kept a small damper on their performances, simply letting their music speak for itself, which worked out fine as well, even though the aforementioned instrumentalists stole the show.

Thaurorod pulled off their work of warming up the audience very well, but for a longer show I would wish for a little more variation in tempo. The songs in themselves had variations, but as I at this point didn’t really know the material, these things are hard to pick up on, and a greater difference would be appreciated.
But, as I said, well done.

Setlist:

Warrior’s Heart
Upon Haunted Battlefields
Tales Of The End
Guide For The Blind
Shadows And Rain
Cursed In The Past
Black Waters