Kicking off the night were the guys of Lähiöbotox, who stand for an energetic and catchy as hell blend of rap, metal and hardcore. For us it wasn’t the first meeting with these guys live and we know that we’re always in for a party with them. Headed by the 2 rappers Luyeye Konssi and Hanad Hassan, they banged out track after track in rapid tempo, properly heating up the Ice Hall. Tracks like ‘Nigi Nigi’ and ‘Hyvä Syy’ every time do the trick for us and we simply love their Finnish styled ghetto metal for its uniqueness. Having released their brand new album ‘Itä-Metal’ only 2 days before, they of course had to represent it with a couple of tracks like ‘Myrkky’ and ‘Mä tuun ja mä lähen’. While at first they seemed like a weird fit with a band like Nightwish, they absolutely killed it on this arena show and were a great warm-up for the night.

Then finally it was time for the band everyone was here for! The arena was filled up quite properly in the mean time and while at first it seemed the crowd was quite reserved, the further in the set, the more engaged and enthusiastic everyone became. And what else was to be expected when you see Nightwish finally after all those delays…

The band came on a rather modestly outfitted stage with a bang, quite literally with fireworks as soon as they kicked off with ‘Noise‘ from their latest, followed by a fire engulfed stage during ‘Planet Hell‘. From there on, both the crowd and band were pretty much warmed up and never took the foot off the gas. Besides the very intimate moment where Floor went to sit with Troy for the emotional and acoustic ‘How’ s the Heart?‘, illuminated by thousands of lights popping up in the crowd. Talking about Floor, after having heard that she recently was plagued by a flu, it was pretty impressive to hear her sing. And while during some songs the vocals sounded maybe a bit thin, maybe she was holding back to save her voice for more tasking tracks like for instance ‘Shoemaker‘. Which was the song from ‘Human. :||: Nature.‘ they played after showing off the gold AND platinum record they received earlier that day for the sales of the album in Finland. During which Floor thanked all of their fans, telling us all they couldn’t do this without our support.

The set was a nice mixture of oldies like ‘Nemo‘ and ‘Ever Dream‘, fan favorites like ‘I Want My Tears Back‘ and ‘Ghost Love Score‘ and tracks from their latest 2 albums sprinkled throughout. Everyone on stage seemed to have a great time, regularly fooling around with each other and dancing their hearts out. As the cherry on top, we got the absolutely epic masterpiece ‘The Greatest Show On Earth’, one of their more recent tracks that quickly became one of my favorites. When they (and all of us) sang “We were here!”, it felt liberating, like we finally could let go of the horrible years we have behind us. To hear thousands of people sing along to those lines, it’ll touch my heartstrings every single time. We’re already looking forward to catching them headlining Rockfest in Hyvinkää, Finland at the beginning of June, what will be an absolute blast for sure!