Norwegian Scream Magazine’s Tour 2005 headlined Gothminister with Tristania and Magicka played at John Dee Concert hall in Oslo Saturday the 12th of March.
Unfortunately Metal Express came too late for Magicka, but caught a surprisingly good act from Tristania. Tristania is a band from Norway’s west coast and they have played together since 1996. Initially thinking that “this is getting old!” — metal bands with female opera singers — forced many to eat their words as Vibeke Stene started singing. This girl can sing! She has a powerful voice and left most of the audience quite astonished. Nightwish and Within Temptation; eat your hearts out!
Accompanied by male singer Kjetil Ingebrethsen, they sure saved the night for Tristania fans. With the guitar and bass player Vibeke Stene, the band put on an amazing head-banging show during the guitar solos.
When Gothminister came on stage, the evening almost felt like it was over already, after that spectacular performance from Tristania. Unfortunately, Tristania fans started leaving by then.
The stage being dark, of course, decorated with red and white devil heads with wings on each side of the stage included a small podium for the Minister to preach from.
Unfortunately the stage at John Dee seemed a bit too small for Gothminister, especially because of the two main characters; The Gothminister and Dementia Narcissus. This time she started off wearing a red, plastic suit that kind of resembled a psycho Crab, not unlike the black crab outfit the Gothminister is wearing on the cover of Empire Of Dark Salvation.
The show in and of itself was very artistic — Dementia dancing around the minister and looking as beautifully sick as only she can look, and changing her outfit from red to white and silver.
Gothminister played almost all of their songs from Empire Of Dark Salvation: “Dark Salvation,” “Monsters,” “Forgotten,” “Nachtzehrer,” “Leviathan,” and “We Die In Dreams” came off like pearls on a string, only with a couple of songs from Gothic Electronic Anthems played in-between. They ended it off with “Happiness In Darkness,” the Gothminister kissing Dementia to everyone’s amusement while entering the podium to thank the audience.
The band was tight, sounding not far off CD-quality. But musically, they lacked a bit of depth, maybe because Halfface, their keyboardist, was not present this evening. The minister was dark and strict as always, as was Maschine and Android, the guitar and keyboard-guitar players. Chris Dead unfortunately got a bit lost behind the band.
Because of the long intro by Tristania, Gothminister seemed a bit short and a lot of the audience felt that Tristania were the biggest surprise this evening.
All in all a very good night for both Goth lovers and Metal lovers, but Gothminister definitely belong on a bigger stage than that offered by John Dee.
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