Live Review: Dark Tranquillity & Ensiferum - Hamburg 2022

Markthalle, Hamburg, Germany
13th April 2022
Dark Tranquillity & Ensiferum - “Double Headlining Tour” 2022 - Special Guests: The Legion:Ghost, Nailed to Obscurity

On April 13, 2022, in the well-known and beloved Markthalle club in Hamburg, a concert of two Top metal bands DARK TRANQUILLITY (Sweden) and ENSIFERUM (Finland) was held. Their joint tour started on April 1 in the Swedish capital Stockholm and will continue in 23 European countries and end in Gothenburg on May 27 after 53 concerts. The special feature of this tour is its special guests. So, for example, in Hamburg, they were such wonderful bands as THE LEGION:GHOST and NAILED TO OBSCURITY. But step by step.

As you might know, unlike other cities in Germany, Hamburg still maintains COVID-19 restrictions and the wearing of FFP2 type masks in public places. For many metal fans in Hamburg, the DARK TRANQUILLITY & ENSIFERUM concert was the first concert in two years of the pandemic, as many shared in the long queue at the Markthalle. The ice was broken and now the club’s poster is full of new announcements of great rock bands for this spring. DARK TRANQUILLITY & ENSIFERUM have given a great start to this concert season. For me, the performance of DARK TRANQUILLITY has become very symbolic since I am from Ukraine and it was the last concert of this band I loved for me before the start of the war in our country and now it has become the first this year here in Hamburg. Life goes on, and I am sure that there will be many bright concerts, excellent reports, and interviews.


The Legion:Ghost

The first to open this evening was THE LEGION:GHOST, their music is a combustible mixture of Metalcore, Thrash, Progressive, and Heavy Metal. The band is quite young, formed in 2015, but it managed to prove itself with bright works even in such a short period. For example, it is worth noting the second album of the band ‘With Courage Of Despair’, and the song from this album ‘Sex Up’, which describes the enormous pressure and imposition of ideals of beauty mediated by the media on us as individuals, instead of seeing the beauty that lies in deviations from them.

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Nailed to Obscurity

NAILED TO OBSCURITY is a melodic death / doom metal band from Esens in East Frisia. The chic hair of these guys can be the envy of all the ladies. That’s what it means to be in style. No really, it’s very important when there is harmony in everything you do, from lyrics and high-quality sound to leather jackets, long hair, and leather boots with a pointed toe. The guys have their style and that’s great. Well, the contract with such a respected label as Nuclear Blast also speaks volumes.

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Ensiferum

ENSIFERUM, a Finnish metal band, usually associated with Vikings or folk metal, rocked the hall in every possible way. One of the founders of the band, Markus Toivonen, made faces all the time, showed his tongue, and in every possible way annealed the whole concert. The band’s vocalist Petri Lindroos kept pushing the audience to the mosh pit and he succeeded in it, the people were cheering almost to all the songs of ENSIFERUM, Finnish flags hovered in the hall. In one of the songs, Petri Lindroos raised his sword like a real Viking, shouting Finnish motivational slogans, and the audience went crazier and plunged into the Scandinavian epic with its head.



Setlist
01. Rum, Women, Victory
02. Andromeda
03. One More Magic Potion
04. Into Battle
05. For Sirens
06. Run from the Crushing Tide
07. Treacherous Gods
08. In My Sword I Trust
09. Lai Lai Hei
10. From Afar

Rating
Music: 8
Performance: 9
Sound: 8
Light: 7
Total: 8 / 10

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Dark Tranquillity

And finally, warmed up like the steel of a Viking sword, the audience in the hall met with loud applause the long-awaited headliner of the evening - DARK TRANQUILLITY. Mikael Stanne, as always, smiled shyly at the applause of the audience, drank a beer amusingly, wished everyone good health, and all the time asked the audience “Well, what else do you want?”, and then he answered his own question “I see that yes, you want and we can do more!” And so, we heard from the band several songs from the band’s 12th studio album ‘Moment’ such as ‘Phantom Days’, ‘Transient’, ‘The Dark Unbroken’, ‘Identical to None’, and beloved hits like ‘Final Resistance’, ‘Atoma’, ‘Encircled’, ‘ThereIn’, etc. Mikael then wished everyone a good night after a hearty dinner, but returned promptly with a great addition in the form of ‘The Treason Wall’, ‘Lost to Apathy’, ‘Misery’s Crown’.



I am glad that the band was in a good mood and inspired by the European tour. We sincerely hope that the situation in the world will now be more stable and we will see each other much more often. Have a successful touring to the DARK TRANQUILLITY & ENSIFERUM and a speedy return to the musical port of Hamburg.

Setlist
01. Phantom Days
02. Transient
03. Focus Shift
04. Monochromatic Stains
05. Forward Momentum
06. Terminus (Where Death Is Most Alive)
07. The Dark Unbroken
08. Final Resistance
09. Atoma
10. The New Build
11. Identical to None
12. Encircled
13. ThereIn
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14. The Treason Wall
15. Lost to Apathy
16. Misery’s Crown

Rating
Music: 10
Performance: 9
Sound: 9
Light: 8
Total: 9 / 10

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All pictures by Iryna Kalenska