By Jase Walker
So today’s show takes me to an area of the Netherlands I’ve not been to before, the rather posh looking area of Amstelveen for tonight’s Wind Rose show at P60. As I approach the venue I’m immediately struck with how massive the queue is, and it’s moving quickly but that is quite a lot of people so I’m eager to see how the venue is inside!
I get into the stage area and it’s a dual level with the lighting engineer suspended in the air more or less! What a cool venue! The opening act doesn’t really do much of an introduction, just signalling their start with some good old fashioned double bass action! Seven Kingdoms kicking us off a night of power metal with a drum kit adorned with plush burgers, a genre that very much does not take itself seriously! Some really solid riffy goodness alongside some symphonic elements, I lap this stuff up and by the looks of the front, so are they! You can always trust crowds to clam horrifically out of time as well, even with something as rhythmically strong as power metal. I can’t help but notice their singer is also wearing burger slippers as well, I don’t know if this is an ongoing thing or whether it’s the last show of the tour special but I’m enjoying the goofiness of it anyway!
They’ve got some real chops for wailing solos as well, they’re doing a fantastic job of getting things going for tonight’s show. Their singer shows her vocal range a few times and drives those high notes with some incredible power but only when it’s absolutely needed, needless to say I’m already sucked into this show and it’s barely been 15 minutes!
After throwing some beach balls around towards the end of the set, they’re suddenly invaded by other people I’m assuming from the stage crew (I later found it was members of All For Metal) including one in a monkey mask and a USA shirt to mess with the band, this is why tour end shows are often a bit mental! Finally after a few attempts, one of the beachballs finally gets volleyed from the floor to the upper balcony to the cheers of the audience. What an immensely fun and silly set its been! The sound engineer didn’t seem too pleased about a few errant balls landing on his kit mind, oh well. Oh also, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone dressed as a cheeseburger on stage at a metal show before either, that’s definitely a first.
Main support tonight is the rather self explanatory name, All For Metal. These are really going all out with everyone garbed in various metal fantasy armor, dancers and fronted by two singers, one of which is the most massive bloke I’ve ever seen with my own eyes! Believe me I’m not talking them down by saying they’re epically goofy, I live for this sort of thing. The performance is straight up designed to be over the top as humanly possible and the music is pretty damn good too! There’s clearly a lot of fans in the crowd as well considering how quickly people are responding to even the slightest motion for participation. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that the massive singer brings out a Mjollnir either, the dude makes Chris Hemsworth seem malnourished. The whole package is awesome though, from the guitarists smashing out big riffs, the rhythm section thunderous all while the singers bounce back and forth with one catering for the gruff, low roar and the other about 6 octaves higher!
I mean even at one point they bring on a lore accurate Thor. If you want a band that’s as close to a live stage show of Viking steeped metal lore, this is it. This is legitimately a super fun show, all bets are off, if there’s something silly they can do for a bit of fun during this show, they’re going to do it! There’s now a table on stage with.m bananas? And the dances are posing with them? Oh I think it’s just a drum, not sure what the bananas were about but the cheeseburger’s back again as well.
This is quite possibly one of the most outrageously chaotic shows I’ve seen in quite a while, and I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I’d had a bit of spacecake by this point but I promise you I’ve been strictly Heineken. I’m not even surprised by this point to see a merch giveaway done as a kind of striptease by the dancers on stage also, this show has been fantastic chaos. I don’t know how Wind Rose are going to top this but I suppose we’ll see soon!
After a quick break outside and listening to a crowd screaming “I am a dwarf and I’m digging a hole”, I think I got a bit of insight into how mental this show’s going to be.
The crowd goes wild as they take the stage, the singer brandishing a massive war axe, the crowd is already loudly screaming the words as the moshpit down the front goes mental. Behind the singer is a huge screen with various videos playing of snowy mountains and lava, everything a harder dwarf lives amongst. The outfits they’re wearing on stage are incredibly well crafted as well with the singer having dwarven faces as shoulder pauldrons, this is nerdy as fuck and I love it! Almost every song so far has had at least one moment of “Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!”, the crowd gladly taking every opportunity to get stuck into the music. The non-stop double bass drumming constantly incites the pit to keep going and going and everyone here is losing their mind and having a great time. Definitely one of those shows where I’m completely lost in the outrageous energy of it all, the band themselves are a complete riff machine and while it is a little goofy as power metal bands tend to be, it’s immense fun.
They lean into their identity as a dwarf metal band, singing about everything from conquest, digging, smithing or just getting piss drunk in a bar and fighting. Think of Gimli from ‘Lord of the Rings’ if he started a metal band and you’re already pretty close to what Wind Rose are doing. I’m honestly in awe of how unbelievably well put together this whole performance and production is, it sounds absolutely fantastic as well. Wind Rose has this audience marching to their instructions and they know it, the singer pulling double duty organising the madness as well as vocals.
This sort of show is exactly what you want when you’ve come to see a band forging (hah!) ahead with their first ever headline show, their big chance to pour everything into their production and really make a show their own. Finishing with ‘Diggy Diggy Hole’ as it seems was expected for the encore, throwing out massive inflatable balls and inviting the other acts (including the cheeseburger) on stage to jump around, this is the one last hurrah for this tour and show, and what a way to end it.
But wait, there’s more? I thought that’d be it but Wind Rose just wants to keep giving. ‘I Am The Mountain’ evidently being a quite emotional one for some in the crowd judging from what’s happening behind me. Quite the extended encore to say the least and tonight’s show has been a real treat, silly, chaotic, but unabashedly epic.
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