Opeth, 02.12.06 Postbahnhof

The Postbahnhof has, according to their web-page, three different halls, the concert was in the Fritzclub, which again seems to have two different stages, I guess it was in the bigger one, with a capacity of 1000 persons. It has two nice pillars supporting the ceiling not too far away (like 2-3 meters) from the stage, they are also not too far to the sides, so that is a good place for me. I managed to get there in time, before the support band started to play.

For the first time I used my ear protectors I bought this summer especially for concerts (and of course forgot to take them all the time until now). I am pretty sure that it was a good idea.

I had no clue about the support band, Amplifier, so I was looking forward to hear them. And I was pleasantly surprised. Quite some creative playing especially on the bass there! Once I am through the bunch of other things on my 'to get'-list, I will come back to them. They only played a short set, for 30 minutes maybe, and then, after rebuilding the stage for about twenty minutes, Opeth entered.

Immediately the hall was heated up, the \m/ going up everywhere. They opened with Ghost of Perdition and played a nice cross-section of their repertoire. I especially liked The Grand Conjuration (which it is not my favourite on the new album, but live it comes to a new life) and it was a pleasure to hear and see Blackwater Park. Between the songs, Mikael Ã…kerfeldt was making a lot of jokes and showed off his new guitar (which looked only a tiny bit gay). He also explained the reasons behind the soft album Damnation (2003), which was frowned upon by many fans, as it doesn't have any death metal feeling at all: "to get chicks" and "to open up a few doors" ;-)

There was only one encore, but as Opeth songs tend to be long, that is like "another band playing 3 songs" (approximately quoted). So at around a quarter to midnight the venue started to empty. And this is were my rant is going to start:

After trying to get to the bar for ten minutes and finally coming through, they didn't sell drinks anymore. Wtf? Okay, if you don't want to sell me something, I am not going to buy anything. Slightly annoyed I wanted to get my coat and go. But the coat-tent was outside, in the cold. And there was a queue going over the whole place. No point in waiting in the cold, then I prefer to wait inside until the queue is shorter. Perfect time to drink something, but, right, they didn't sell anymore. After ten minutes waiting inside I was kicked out of the hall, as they wanted to clean up so that the party/disco that was going on in the next room could also move to this hall. Grrreat. So I had to stand outside for nearly 45 minutes to get my coat. This, dear venue owners, is absolutely unprofessional, if you are unable to handle the event, don't do it. It is a plain impudence to let people wait outside in middle of the night in the beginning of December for their coats and they even have to pay one Euro for that. No thanks, my first and last time at this venue.

Rant end. So. Besides the annoyance at the end it was a great concert, I had a lot of fun and quite obviously the band had fun too. As it should be. Looking forward to the next time.