First band of the day for us was a joyous reunion with the quickly rising Finnish power metal outfit Thaurorod.
It wasn’t long since last we had seen them, this spring actually, but the gig at that time had been a pleasure, and so we were looking forward to see what they had up their sleeve for a festival audience…

Only problem here was, there really wasn’t much of a crowd to speak of. Only a few people were defying the blistering heat and sunshine this early in the day for a dose of melodic overload; then again, Metalfest seemed to concentrate mostly on extreme (black, death, etc.) metal bands of various sorts, so I guess this was what most of the crowd was going for as well… In fact, Thaurorod was the one of only two power metal bands on our list, the other being Sabaton the day after…

Still, shame on those who give up, and Thaurorod wasn’t one to take on any such shame, that much was certain.
The first thing I noticed was that there once again was a new guy behind the keys, this was the third person of a total of three concerts now! Ok, so I knew the last one was only a temporary instalment for that tour, but still.
The new kids name was Vili Ollila, and his game was playing fast and performing with a ton of humour! I don’t know exactly how long he has actually been in the band, I just know it’s not for very long, and yet it seemed like he fitted perfectly in, as if he had always been there.
The rest of the guys were really rocking the festival as well, but I knew they could do it already from earlier times, so this wasn’t as much of a surprise. The delight was not lessened by this however, it seems these guys will always be a blast to watch.

As there hadn’t gone all that much time since our last meeting with Thaurorod, the performance as a whole hadn’t really had time to change all that much, and the setlist was also identical to the one played at the Power of Metal show in Hamburg.
With this in mind, I would expect the thing was pretty well rehearsed by now, but it turned out that nothing is a given; vocalist Michele Luppi managed to not only wrongly announce a song, but he managed to announce it as a song they had already played! This was done before the song Scion Of Stars, but Luppi thought it was Morning Lake. He even commented; ”You know that one, right?”, and well, yes, yes we did. After all, we had just listened to it! One can only imagine what these Finns do to a poor defenceless Italian in the tour-bus…

That aside, I was once again moved by what a great and energetic live-band Thaurorod is, and my only regret is that there weren’t more of us up to see it.

Setlist:

Warrior’s Heart
Tales Of The End
Morning Lake
Guide For The Blind
Scion Of Stars
Shadows And Rain