Artist:  Firewind & Kiuas

Venue: Whelans, Dublin 

Date:  22 September 2008 

I discovered Firewind on a free CD that I received from Metal Hammer, off the back of that I purchased their new CD – The premonition, which I really liked. I was delighted then to see that Firewind were playing a date in Dublin and with Tickets only 22 Euros, I knew I couldn’t go wrong!! 

Whelans is a small intimate venue in Dublin city centre. It has the comfort of my front room coupled with really good acoustics. My other half and I arrived on the night just before 9 pm and were surprised to see that the support band was just going on. I hadn’t heard of Kiuas before, but within the first 2 minutes of their performance, I was sold!! They were just fab and full of energy. Their lead singer has a lovely melodic voice but one of the guitarists also contributed little snippets of death metal singing which really added flavour to the mix. They played for about 25minutes and definitely made a lot of Irish fans. Their rapport with the audience was great and there wasn’t any of the usually clichés (‘scream for me long beach’!!). After their set, the band made their way to the bar where they were very happy to chat the rest of the night away with anyone willing to buy them a pint.  

Firewind made their entrance to a huge roar from the crowd. The band looked great and even the wind fans blowing their hair added to the atmosphere. As the venue is small, it was like being in the front row of a stadium gig. The setlist included the following songs: Head up High, Kill to Live, Angels forgive Me, Silent Code, My Loneliness, Mercenary Man plus guitar and drum solo's.

At the start, Apollo's voice sounded a little bit rough and I didn’t think that he sounded like my CD, however, by the 3^rd / 4^th song, his voice had well improved and the crowd seemed to be well impressed. This was Firewind's first gig in Ireland and it was a great night. I would definitely go to see them again as I know I’ll be in for a good old melodic metal night out.

Review by Janice.

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