So earlier this year I had finally did what I thought would eventually become impossible. That was to finally graduate from my masters program. As a reward, my girlfriend got three concert tickets for a show in august for Nightwish and Sonata Arctica who was opening for them.

Now a few days ago was my birthday and for my birthday my girlfriend purchased for me Disgaea 3 for the PS3. Which in my opinion is the best game from NIS since the origional disgaea.

Last night I finally went to the the concert and had a blast. The show was pretty good and Sonata Arctica was absolutely amazing on stage. The lead singer was using his mic stand to play air guitar and was headbanging and bouncing all over the place. It was an amazing time. He had great stage energy and could hit most of the notes.

Aside from Sonata Arctica being great, it was my first time seeing them live so I didn't know what to expect, and it was my girlfriends first time going to a heavy metal show. At first she was worried because she's not exactly tall and felt people were going to trample over her since, well at metal shows people sometimes mosh.

Anyways, she didn't get trampled and we found some decent seats.

After a great start to the night, Nightwish came on stage. I've seen them once before with their old singer who was canned and I was curious to see if the new singer could do any good. In my opinion, the answer is.....NO.

Nightwish has a very odd way of doing their songs. The older material from them is quite melodic and goes through the whole range from high to low. When the old singer sang live, she could handle the range because of being a classically trained singer. The new singer is more of a rocker and not very good at it either. As a result, everything felt to be in mid range and when out of it, her voice cracked. Perhaps i'm being harsh but the new singer kinda killed the band.

Aside from the new sound of Nightwish (more power metal than gothic), the crowd there was somewhat interesting. I saw several people wearing Nightwish shirts, one Mastadon shirt, few Iron Maiden, one Blind Guardian, Iced Earth, and a bunch of fifteen year old "look at me i'm cool with my Hot Topic" clothing. I hate to say it but after going to the show, Nightwish has completely turned trendy.

Anyways, the crowd was nuts for Nightwish and moderately warm for Sonata Arctica, whom I thought was amazing.

I cant remember which tunes Sonata did, they were all amazing but most I didn't recognize (dammit, no fullmoon or end of this chapter) but the lineup for Nightwish was odd. Christ, they played The Siren live. Yes, the Siren, that one song no one cares about. They also opened with Bye Bye Beautiful, played Dark Chest of Wonders, The Poet and the Pendulum (a song I love but wasn't great live), Come Cover Me, 7 Days to the Wolves, Ever Dream and many many more.

All in all Nightwish was slightly disappointing and Sonata Arctica was amazing and the show was great. Was certainly a happy night.