Santa Cruz
The first performance of the evening was given by the Finnish band Santa Cruz. With a really nice show and very good sound they had one of the most difficult tasks of the evening: preparing the crowd for the upcoming bands including main act Amaranthe. One could easily see that they had clearly done this before as they did a really good job. With far more than 37,000 likes on Facebook this interesting band has no need to hide from anybody. They just released their new hard rock album named Santa Cruz which managed to bring some fresh air to the genre. The four Finnish guys including frontman Archied Cruz like to call themselves “Pure Fucking Adrenaline”. Their sound reminds us of good old 80s hard rock but it also easily fits into today’s music scene. Their influences like Guns N’ Roses, Yngwie Malmsteen or even Steel Panther were clearly hearable. Keep up the good work!

Engel
Unfortunately the sound of Engel was not mixed as nice and appealing as Santa Cruz’s. A little bit too much heights and bass drum was “tormenting” our ears (it wasn’t that bad tough). But the crowd did not mind and so the atmosphere Santa Cruz created was kept and one felt adequately prepared for Amaranthe. The metal band from Gothenburg with singer Mikael Sehlin kept reminding us of their big rolemodel “In Flames”. Nevertheless Engel did not sound like a cheap copy but could convince us of their capabilities. But there were times were we wished there was more pressure because the set was sounding a little bit flat from time to time.

Amaranthe
Of course Amaranthe had to make a stop in Munich for their 2015 Massive Addictive tour, too. With a new album and an improved show the young band excelled themselves once more.
Last year the new album was called The Nexus, this year the band brought Massive Addictive to the show. The Swedish folks managed to keep a great balance between “old classics” and new songs. With approximately 140 db (at least it was feeling like that) songs like Hunger, Amaranthine, Electroheart or Drop Dead Cynical were blasting from the speakers. The stage show and the band itself were able to step up a notch when compared to last year’s show. No more moments, where Elize did not quite know what to do besides singing (note: singing would totally do the job!). The guys Morten, Johan, Olof, Henrik and Jake could also deliver an awesome performance.
Good thing with the pretty intimate concerts at clubs is that the crowd is as close to the stage as it can get. Amaranthe knew how to use this circumstance in order to deliver a great show. More than once a smartphone found its way from the first rows of the crowd into Jake’s hands and was filled with video clips and snapshots directly from the stage. Not only were the owners of the phones very pleased with this but it also contributed a lot to the great atmosphere of the concert. One thing that did not improve compared to last year (because no further improvement was necessary) was the vocal and musical performance of the band – There was no reason for any criticism at all. With a considerable amount of four encore songs the crowd could be satisfied and many other acts could learn a thing or two from Amaranthe.
Bottom line: It was an awesome concert and the only thing left to do is to wish the next cities on the band’s list an equally awesome night.

Text: Manuel Mader