Written by:	Bas
Published:	14.04.2007

Prologue

A bit over a month ago I was strongly suffering from withdrawal symptoms; reason being that my last concert (End Of Dayz festival, check out my three day review!) had been a whole three months ago, a quarter year without gigs, yikes! Wanting to end my obvious and horrendous agony I started browsing through the net, searching out homepages of bands and hoping for a few good shows in the next week. Sadly enough the only gig from my few favourite Swiss bands was one by Darkmoon (check the review). Of course I attended this one, but my hunger wasn't stilled by one show. Browsing further among reviews of Swiss bands I stumbled upon a review by MetalStorm's very own Jeff. I stumbled upon Felony. The review made this Swiss sextet seem quite promising to me. This sounded like something I'd greatly enjoy, add the fantastic rating and the fact that I haven't been to a power metal concert since quite some time. Anyway, as I listened through Felony's debut it took but a moment's time to convince me that I'd like to see this band live. With high hopes but low expectations I sought out their homepage and visited the dates section, and viola! There it was, a date for next month.

Armed with my camera, a recording device, my ipod to listen to their stuff once more in the train and of course the greatness that is a MetalStorm t-shirt, I sat in the train at the station of Basel and attempted to kill the time until my arrival at the middle of nowhere, Boswil. Of course this is rather irrelevant though since most of Switzerland is nowhere?

That aside, I eventually arrived in "Boswil" where I embarked on an epic journey to actually find the venue. Although this might sound quite adventurous; it wasn't. In Boswil I met with the band and had an interview (coming up soon on MetalStorm!) with the four members already present at the venue. After an enjoyable discussion the show should have started soon, yet due to some reason, technical problems would be my best guess, the supporting band could finally begin their set after a way too long wait.

Rizon

Checking out their website I noticed that most of the bands from the fav-band lists of the members were something in the symphonic and power metal corners of our beloved music-style. Thus, unsurprisingly, I was expecting this supporting act to be the same. I was only partly right though. It's not very easy to track their exact musical roots, seen that they have a lot more variation than most bands of their style(s). Yet I think I can place them in the section of slightly symphonic melodic rock/power metal, maybe a small lick of heavy in between rock rhythms or power choruses.




Like I said though, between these musical walls there is still room for songs sounding different from each other, and although most bands in this style don't use this room, Rizon definitely does. A few examples being; in a couple of songs the keyboard was absolutely dominant over the other instruments while it was barely used in other songs at all. Furthermore the dual vocal approach, in which the male vocalist usually took the lead with the female vocalist backing up. Add a song in Spanish (I think?) and a few cool cover songs. The crowd mainly stayed in the middle and back of the venue, while the front row consisted of about five or six people, probably due to that the crowd wasn't as young as at most other concerts I've been too. Despite standing in the back the crowd did show their liking for the music by clapping loudly after each song.




Apropos of the cover songs I mentioned earlier? I wouldn't have expected to ever sing along to Living On A Prayer! In fact instead of being as annoying as usual this song actually kind of broke the ice for me this time. It wasn't so easy for me to get into Rizon at first, despite some great guitar soli, maybe because the music doesn't exactly fit my taste, maybe they just played better songs in the second half of the show, I don't know. But I do know that they started rather boring but became more and more enjoyable towards the end of the show. They then ended the show with what was definitely the best song of their set.




Setlist: Destiny, Evolution, Livin' on a Prayer (Bon Jovi), Endless Journey, Wishes & Dreams, Sea of time, Hold the Line (TOTO), Out of Nowhere, El Dios, Ravenmaster

Music - 7
Not completely my thing but definitely not bad.
Atmosphere - 6
A bit too low on energy for a metal concert in my opinion.
Crowd interaction - 8
It was good, especially the vocalist's gestures at the crowd.
Miscellaneous - 7
The sound quality was "ok" and the temperature was very enjoyable, the lighting was horrid though.
Overall impression - 7
Enjoyable, however nothing to write home about, there are still quite a number of things that can be done better, but it was enjoyable as it was.

Overall rating: 7.0

Felony

So now it was the second, and last, band's turn. Like I already mentioned Felony were definitely able to convince me with their album, I was wondering if they'd be able to do the same with their show. But let's not be unconventional for now and just save the bottom line for the bottom of the review.

After a long wait and a short intro, Felony started off with two of their best songs. "What A Felony" and "My Way" are both extremely catchy European-style power metal tracks of an amazingly high quality. Then again though, there are enough catchy European power metal bands, but luckily Felony didn't limit themselves to such a track list (although with such high quality songs it would still be acceptable in this case ). Next to such awesome power metal songs we also got a load of ballads and duets with a few small touches of pop in it. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not talking about the kind of pop by which all of us frequently get annoyed when turning on the radio or TV, but rather the kind of pop that is soft, catchy and extremely pleasant to listen too. This kind of pop is present in a couple of Felony's songs and it really adds a new dimension to the music. All in all this is probably the main reason why I like Felony. While their power metal compositions are really great, they are way more accessible and by far more pleasant to listen to then all those watered down Blind Guardian and Rhapsody (Of Fire ) clones that are clogging the scene right now.






Although the band was having some problems with their monitors, they were able to sort these out and continue the shows without further problems. The lighting was extremely improved upon since Rizon's show, which of course wasn't very hard, but it was still far from perfect. Well, you can't have everything of course and the music more then made up for it.



The keyboarder of the band turned out to be more then just a keyboarder and frequently switched between his keyboard and a guitar, he also did some backing vocals. It surprised me that backing vocals were even needed, seen that Felony has two lead vocalists(!), yet I really can't complain, it sounded good. The band used a few choir and keyboard samples, namely during the moments that the keyboardist preferred his guitar.

Compared to the supporting band, the bulk of the crowd was closer to the stage now, yet there wasn't a front row near the stage this time. The reason therefore probably being that the crowd's average age was a lot higher then that of most shows I've been to recently. Despite the lack of good lighting, there was quite an amount of smoke used in the show. Especially during the encore, "The Final Countdown," there was a huge amount of smoke in the air. And something else I can't forget to mention, the drummer's kit looked freaking awesome!




So now we've arrived at the end of the review; referring to the question I asked myself at the beginning: did the band live up to my high expectations? The female vocals came across much stronger (and better!) than on the CD, so that's a big thumbs up; the male vocals however were a bit weaker, yet I'm not saying that they were bad, since they were so good on the album it was probably extremely hard to not sound a bit weaker live. The whole instrumentation sounded more powerful on the album, while I like the CD for it's "soft" approach, I can't deny that it sounded much better in this "powerful" way when played live.

So here we go, my bottom line:
The band sounded "different" than on the album, in a few ways better, in others a bit worse, but they certainly didn't disappoint me, great CD, great live show, great band!

Music - 9
The music was very good.
Atmosphere - 7
It was still a bit low on energy, but there were also a few very emotional passages.
Crowd interaction - 7
The crowd interaction was good, nothing more, nothing less.
Miscellaneous - 7
The sound quality was "ok" and the temperature was very enjoyable, the lighting was horrid though.
Overall impression - 8
It was a good gig, the music was great and the band put up a good show.

Overall rating: 7.6

Selist: Intro, What A Felony, My Way, Justice, When The Rain Begins To Fall, After The Rain, Tonight, Cyberspace, Disappointed, Faster Than The Speed Of Flash, Blind Love, The Dark, Out In The Fields, World Gone Made, Changes, Promising Heart, On Life's End, Freedom, Say Goodbye. Encore: The Final Countdown (Europe)