Diary of Dreams - Essen 2008

Music
The set started by a spoken / whispered intro, followed by ‘Nekrolog 43’ the opener of the eponymous current album. The setlist consisted of several more songs taken from the current album, like ‘The Plague’, ‘Son of a Thief’ or ‘Hypo)crypticK(al’, mixed with older songs and hits like ‘She’, ‘Butterfly:Dance!’, ‘MenschFeind’, ‘Soul Stripper’ or ‘Traumtänzer’. The main set finished after about 85 minutes with the club hit ‘The Curse’. Of course the crowd requested an encore, which was given with three wonderful acoustic versions, followed by the finalising lullaby ‘She and her Darkness’.



Performance
At the start of the show five black clothed and hooded people were standing at the rim of the stage and spook the intro. First I had wondered about the 5th people because I knew that only four band member play on this tour, later I found out that Albert - the tour manager was the 5th person on stage and that it was a surprise for the band. Anyway, after the intro the band member shed the hoods and the concert started powerful with ‘Nekrolog 43’. Right from the start the crowd was infected by the powerful and strong performance; Adrian mostly in the centre of the stage behind his extravagant microphone stand bewitched the audience with his charismatic voice, Gaun:A the virtuosic guitar player dominated booth sides of the stage, sometimes on the left side, sometimes on the right side and D.N.S. and Taste played their  instruments dedicated in the background.



During the first songs Adrian did play the guitar as well, later he concentrated to the singing. The sound was simply great and the lightshow too, especially the sky full of sparkling stars background during ‘Traumtänzer’ and later on during ‘She and her Darkness’ as well. The well-filled venue was in a good temper, was singing and dancing along at the whole show and at the last song some sparklers were lighted in the crowd which gave a great effect together with the stars shining behind the stage. The first encore included three songs and was performed as an acoustic part with two acoustic guitars and keyboard. The second encore was performed only by Adrian and Taste and after it, all band members and the support band too came on stage to say goodbye.