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Nightwish's only two appearances in North America were in Montreal, and were not part of the regular tour, since they were coming over for their vacation and the promotion company got lucky. Montreal being only two hours away, I got my ticket for the first show, but when I learned that Hanker would be opening on the second night, well, I had to be there!

Saturday

The show started a bit late, but that's pretty much the way they do things there. All bands that night had female singers, starting with Hypnos, a local band who was decent, but with only three members on stage, it was not exactly impressive. Some pretty good songs though. Transcendence were next, obviously more experienced than Hypnos, they put on a very good set, someone told me they sounded a bit like The Gathering. The show really took off with the next act, Forgotten Tales from Quebec City. I had heard they were good, but I didn't expect them to be that good. They played a number of their own compositions along with a bunch of covers from bands such as Gamma Ray, Rhapsody and Sonata Arctica, to name a few. The singer interacted a lot with the crowd and got a lot of enthusiastic response, and they even came back for two other songs after their set. On Sunday they said they will release an album sometime in 2001, and, if it's anything like the quality of the material they played, it's an album that you will want to get.

Nightwish were next, and, no surprise there, the crowd just went nuts. I was really curious to see how good they were live and I must say that I was blown away by their performance. Lots of interaction with the crowd, good light show as well, it was a non-stop performance of most of the songs off Wishmaster, and some from the previous two albums, which I unfortunately don't have. Their drummer is nuts, the guitarist has a very good stage presence and the keyboardist seemed to be having the time of his life. The bassist was a little more quiet though, but didn't seem out of place either. Tarja was awesome, even headbanging at times, something I didn't really expect! A very professional performance.

Sunday

The Sunday crowd was much, much smaller than on Saturday, probably about 300-350 max (compared to more than 1500 on Saturday, or so I'm told.) Except for Forgotten Tales, who played a slightly shorter set than on Saturday, the opening bands were different on Sunday. First were promising progressive metallers Silent Exile. I missed the beginning of their show but caught most of it. Progressive metal isn't my thing, but the live performance was quite enjoyable, and the singer did a very good job of entertaining the crowd. I don't know exactly how long he's been doing this, but he sure seemed to have a lot of stage experience. Good show. Forgotten Tales were next, and, as mentionned earlier, played a slightly shorter set. Same good live performance though, I hope to see them again soon. The almighty Hanker were next, playing mostly songs from their just-released masterpiece "Snakes and Ladders". I've seen them live a few times before, and this was probably their best performance, although, being an opening act, they played a much shorter set than the previous times I've seen them. Lots of energy on stage, and in the crowd too, with people singing along during some of the songs. Too bad they couldn't play a longer set, rare are the bands that have three albums full of top quality material like Hanker. Nightwish were next, playing a set about the same length as Saturday's, but they varied it a little bit, playing a couple of diferent songs. The performance was still excellent.

One thing I want to mention is that, even if the crowd on Sunday was very small considering the size of the venue, all bands played as if the place was full packed. People got their money worth, and more. So, while the crowd was smaller, the band line up on Sunday was much better than on Saturday, with bigger names like Silent Exile and Hanker added to the bill.

This was one of the best shows this year by all accounts!!

Additional Information

- This review covers the November 25 and 26 shows.