Author: Rok Klemše
Location: VPK Mediapark / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 08.12.2007
Attendance: 500
Ticket price: 26.00€ / 28.00€
Therion. The great Swedish beast is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, and mastermind Christofer Johnsson has a truly long, respect-worthy road behind him. Over twenty years with Therion, the brilliant musician and composer has built one of the biggest and most respected bands in metal, one that’s still considered among the most innovative, daring and experimental acts in the genre. That genre is symphonic metal, which Therion themselves pretty much invented. Twenty years, eleven excellent studio albums and countless musicians later, there couldn’t have been a better occasion for a special tour. Therion last wowed us here this past January, when they stopped by Ljubljana’s Mediapark on the tour for their current record Gothic Kabbalah, and they’re old friends of Slovenian stages anyway. When the date of the reunion with Therion was announced, I stayed fairly cool, but once the news broke that this would be a very special, one-of-a-kind tour for the band’s round jubilee, all doubts were gone. Welcome back, Therion! Support on this tour was originally supposed to come from Germany’s The Vision Bleak and Norway’s Sirenia, but singer Monika Pedersen left the latter before the tour even started. Therion didn’t go looking for a new opener and simply stretched their set to two and a half hours!
The still pretty empty stage of VPK was first taken by German gothic metallers The Vision Bleak. These oddballs, with their quirky take on gothic metal, more or less put the Mediapark crowd to sleep, and frontman Allen Konstanz looked on stage like he was about to doze off like a baby any second. Guitarist and backing vocalist Ulf Theodor Scwadorf, who is, besides Allen, the only permanent member of The Vision Bleak, proved a bit more energetic. The lyrical themes of the German outfit are actually pretty interesting for your average metalhead, since they draw on horror films and literature, but sadly the execution in practice is weaker. The morbid, slow music and the static members on stage feel like they’ve just risen from the grave, and I was quite glad when, after a half-hour set, they went back to lock themselves in their coffins.
Then the tension in the hall kept building by the minute, and when the roadies (who, by the way, were dressed in a very fitting way, matching the scenography, as monks) led the chained-up members of Therion onto the stage, it exploded. There was absolutely no time to catch our breath, as they immediately set everything ablaze with the siege of the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah, with the fantastic opener of the album Vovin, The Rise of Sodom and Gomorrah. In those first moments of the show, Therion showed us what was in store – a hellish two hours at the highest possible level of quality. Vocally, the lineup changed slightly since the last gig: lead and soprano vocals were once again handled by Lori Lewis, the main male vocals were again taken over by the irreplaceable Snowy Shaw (the legendary Snowy has already proven himself in Mercyful Fate, King Diamond and Dream Evil), who doesn’t look anywhere near his 38 springs, while the brilliant Mats Leven was this time replaced by the excellent Thomas Vikström, best known to metalheads as the vocalist on the album Chapter VI by legendary doom metal band Candlemass. For the first half of the show Therion played a kind of “best-of” set picked by the fans, followed by a hard-hitting favorite from the album Sirius B, the energetic Son of the Sun. Lori sang the entire show breathtakingly, while looking so damn sexy that the whole male population was drooling, flirting with the photographers and messing with Thomas and Snowy on stage. But Snowy and Thomas weren’t thrown off, vocally they shone just as strongly as Lori, and Snowy once again proved he’s an unrivaled frontman with incredible charisma and stage presence that plenty of people can only envy. Thomas hung back a bit shyly at the start, but soon got bolder and performed with confidence, both vocally and as a “frontman”. With Midgard and Asgard Therion paid tribute to the Norse gods, and with Wine of Aluguah they returned to Vovin one last time. Then two girls dressed up as a deer and a she-wolf got hold of Snowy and chained him to a pillory, where Snowy belted out the fantastic Wisdom and the Cage from Gothic Kabbalah. Somewhere in the middle of the song Thomas ran onto the stage and rescued Snowy, who thanked him with “My Savior” and asked us for a round of applause. No need to say twice that the crowd was eating out of all three vocalists’ hands. As if that weren’t enough, another surprise followed, the Kali Yuga trilogy. Yes, you read that right, trilogy: Therion wrote a third part just for this occasion. Next came one of the loveliest moments of the show, the phenomenal Lemuria in an acoustic version that turned out dreamlike. Lori joked it would be played with 67 acoustic guitars, or as Snowy said the day before, with 666 of them, admitting he’s just bad at math. For the acoustic Lemuria, Therion were joined by Piotr Wawrzeniuk, who drummed for the band from 1993 to 1997 and in 2004 lent his vocals to Lemuria/Sirius B. Therion wrapped up the first part of the show with the energy bombs Typhon and Ginnugagap, and then took a well-deserved ten-minute break. After ten minutes came the most anticipated moment of the night, the band’s landmark record, the cult classic Theli, played in full. Of course, right at the start we were handed over to the Beast, To Mega Therion. Hearing the whole of Theli live in such a bombastic performance, with pompous scenography and an exotic belly dancer to feast our eyes on, was an unrepeatable experience, so all words are superfluous. Every time Therion step onto our stages, hard as it is to believe, they’re a notch better. The instrumentalists shone again too, Kristian Niemann with excellent soloing, Peter Karlsson and Johan Niemann as a great rhythm section, the fantastic keyboardist Ferdy Doernberg (Axel Rudi Pell), who superbly adapted the keyboard parts, and of course “Therion himself,” the brilliant Christofer Johnsson. They left the stage once more and came back with Snowy dressed as a giant goat. As if all that weren’t enough, Therion served up the epic, thirteen-minute treat Adulruna Rediviva and one more surprise to close, the traditional ending with a cover, this time the phenomenal Summernight City by ABBA. Right at the end, Christofer sincerely thanked everyone for twenty years together. Christofer and Therion, thank you, and see you on the fortieth anniversary tour!
THERION SETLIST:
1. The Rise of Sodom and Gomorrah
2. Son of the Sun
3. Midgard
4. Asgard
5. Wine of Alugah
6. Wisdom and the Cage
7. Kali Yuga Part 1
8. Kali Yuga Part 2
9. Kali Yuga Part 3
10. Lemuria
11. Via Nocturna
12. An Arrow From the Sun
13. Typhon
14. Ginnungagap
—————–
15. Preludium (Intro)
16. To Mega Therion
17. Cults of the Shadow
18. In the Desert of Set
19. Interludium
20. Nightside of Eden
21. Opus Eclipse
22. Invocation of Naamah
23. The Siren of the Woods
24. Grand Finale/Postludium
——————
25. Adulruna Rediviva
26. Summernight City
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