Amorphis / Dark Tranquility /  Moonspell / Omnium Gatherum - The Orpheum  - Tampa, Florida - October 5th, 2018

 

 Co - headliners Amorphis and Dark Tranquility made a stop at The Orpheum in Tampa, Florida on Friday night October 5th along with Moonspell and Omnium Gatherum, this promised to be a long night of GREAT Metal with these 4 bands plus 2 local openers. We have never seen any of these bands so this was a show that we had been looking forward to for quite a while! Doors were an early 6pm with show start time of 7pm, we had about an hour drive to Tampa and with this being a Friday we were keeping our fingers crossed that we would arrive in a timely manner, we didn't want to miss any of the action as this was a fantastic opportunity to see  these 4 amazing bands in one package deal! Our fear of the usual Friday afternoon traffic nightmare was thankfully unfounded and we had time to meet up with friends for a short time before the show. Now, the Orpheum isn't one of our favorite places in the area to see a concert, it's not very big, the layout of the club is kind of strange, sound can be hit or miss, drinks can be very expensive and 2 ceiling support poles on either side of the stage make viewing the bands, plus concert photography, difficult from certain angles. With that being said, there are many great bands that perform at The Orpheum and shows there always draw a large audience, this concert was no exception as The Orpheum was VERY crowded! We didn't get a chance to check out either of the local bands as we arrived about 15 minutes before Omnium Gatherum hit the stage but we were primed and ready for a night of GREAT Death Metal!

 

 Finnish Death Metal veterans Omnium Gatherum were the first of the 4 main event bands of the night to perform, the order that the bands performed in after Omnium Gatherum was Moonspell, Dark Tranquility and Amorphis. We could tell that the large crowd was pumped up and ready to rock, The Orpheum was packed and even the VIP balcony area was standing room only. With the early show starting time it still turned out to be a late night with the show not ending until after midnight, it didn't seem to us that anybody left the concert early as the crowd size stayed large throughout the entire night. Omnium Gatherum and Moonspell both had abbreviated sets with each band only performing for about 30 minutes. Omnium Gatherum seemed to concentrate mostly on their albums The Burning Cold and Grey Heavens with 5 of the 7 songs that they performed being from those 2 albums.

 

 Portugal's Moonspell is a very theatric type band with vocalist Fernando Ribeiro arriving onstage wearing a long trench coat, hat and carrying a lantern, he had the look of a Victorian era undertaker and the band's large backdrop of a full moon completed the image. For the song 1755 whose lyrics refer to The Great Lisbon Earthquake of that year, he donned a leather facemask of the type worn by a Victorian Plaque Doctor. Moonspell made the most of their abbreviated set performing 8 songs with 3 of those numbers being from their 1996 release Irreligious and 2 songs from the band's latest release 1775.

 

 With Dark Tranquility and Amorphis sharing the co - headlining duties, both bands performed for over an hour with Dark Tranquility being the first of these two to perform. Dark Tranquility seemed to be one of the crowd favorites with the band getting a GREAT crowd response, we observed quite a few people with their fists in the air and singing along with the band. The band took advantage of their longer set by performing a total of 14 tracks, they seemed to favor the album Atoma with 5 songs being performed from the album, Fiction with 3 songs and Damage Done with 2. They performed 1 song from each of these albums; Character, Construct, Haven and Projector. Vocalist Mikael Stanne sings in both clean and Death Metal style vocals and the band had a video screen at the back of the stage, something that we have never seen before at The Orpheum! There seemed to be a great rapport between vocalist and crowd with Stanne addressing and acknowledging audience members several times during the show. To say that Dark Tranquility went over well with this very appreciative crowd would be an understatement!

 

 

 Amorphis wrapped up the night with their brand of Finnish progressive metal with some harsh death metal type vocals. Originally, back when the band first formed they were strictly a death metal band, but as they evolved over the years they added progressive and folk metal elements to their music. The band has been around since 1990 and have developed an impressive fan base. That was apparent at The Orpheum show, as they performed before a very enthusiastic crowd. The band performed 12 songs, and leaned heavily on their latest album Queen of Time performing 5 songs off of that release. They filled out the rest of their set with two songs each from albums Tales From the Thousand Lakes, and Under the Red Cloud. The rest of the setlist consisted of 1 song from each of these albums: Circle, Eclipse, and Skyforger. We have compared setlists to other stops on this tour and it seems as though the band has been performing 14 songs compared to our show which only had 12. We suspect it had to do with a time issue as the show ended up going very late.

 

 All in all, it was a fantastic show with 4 great bands! It was cool seeing all of them in one great tour package. Thanks to Charles Elliot from Nuclear Blast for arranging photo passes for us as well as the tickets to this show. Also thanks to Amorphis, Dark Tranquility, Moonspell, and Omnium Gatherum for a kick ass night of great metal!

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