Seven Kingdoms: A (hot) chick fronted power metal band. They were pretty typical female-fronted metal songwriting wise. They had 2-3 songs that were standouts and the rest were technically proficient, but not memorable. The vocalist, however, is a spectacular vocalist. I think she has a future no matter what happens to her current band.

Holy Grail: I guess they were sort of and American powermetal/heavy metal style band. I was excited to see them, and was very dissapointed by the result. Not one memorable tune.


Blind Guardian: The stars of the show who I drove 3 hours to see. I missed them in 2006, so I swore I wouldn't miss them the next time they came.

They played a great mix of just about all their albums. I'd say NIME got the most play (which is my 1st or 2nd favorite album ever, depending on mood, so yay!) including finishing with Mirror, Mirror.

Hansi Kursch is a goofy looking front man, but he interacted well with the crowd. He's funny and usually had something witty to say before each song.

I'd say Blind Guardian's more straight-forward songs do much better in concert. So much of their appeal for me (which many don't like) is how they layer things and mix things in the studio. That doesn't always translate well in concert. HOWever, Kursch does an awesome job of getting the crowd to be his backing vocals.


Blind Guardian can be officially checked of my "Bucket List".

Pictures forthcoming in Picture Thread.

Looked for Dallas Black - thought maybe I'd recognize someone from HoM, but had no luck.

That's awesome. Blind Guardian is a band I'd love to see in concert sometime.

Too bad about Holy Grail, I love that album. Sounds cool.

Is the album itself good? Need to check it out. The performance was just uneven and I couldn't hear the vocalist.