Here, as promised, is my review of last night's Dio concert in Copenhagen.
About a thousand people had all made their way to Amager Bio (almost sold out), one of the city's smaller venues. I had never been there before but was pleasantly surprised, it had great acoustics for such a small place.
First up was the opening band, and suffice it to say, they SUCKED. They were a Danish band and I would go as far as calling them a national disgrace
Jeez, they stunk. Their main problem was their sound systems which made it virtually impossible to hear their songs properly. At times, the frontman was not audible at all! Another problem of theirs was that their material was about as exiting as sticking your tongue out of an open window. And the frontman had ZERO stage presence, dressed like a porn star in a purple satin suit and sounded (when he was audible) like a bargain basement Vince Neil.
The crowd was unanimous in its rejection of the opening act and anticipation grew. Then finally, did the rockmeister and his cohorts grace us with their presence. The crowd went wild, to use a cliché. The opener was Children of the Sea. Dio was simply amazing, nothing less. It's incredible that he is still able to maintain that forceful a voice and that commanding a stage presence. He blew all of us away. His band was made up of excellent (if not brilliant) musicians and they supported Dio's voice extremely well and it all became a thunder wreaking, hard rocking sound hitting you right where it should.
The setlist:
Children Of The Sea
I Speed At Night
Stand Up And Shout
Holy Diver
Gypsy
Sunset Superman
Rainbow In The Dark
I
All The Fools Sailed Away
Temple of the King
Kill The King
Man On The Silver Mountain
Catch The Rainbow
Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll
Drum, keyboard and guitar solos
Encores:
Heaven And Hell
We Rock
The Last In Line
All in all an excellent selection of songs, from my perspective it's just missing Sacred Heart and Rock n'Roll Children, but that is minor compared to all the lovely Rainbow stuff they chose to play
I is a real treat to be able to say that you have heard those songs live. Dio didn't play a single song badly, but especially good were Heaven and Hell, Kill the King, Sunset Superman, Holy Diver, All The Fools Sailed Away and I.
As you can see, the audience demanded a lot of encores and they got them by cheering "Dio!Dio!Dio!". The band were all smiles and they seemed very grateful and humbled by the overwhelming response of the audience. Afterwards, a guy standing behind me exclaimed "Who wants Madonna when you can have Dio?!" (Madonna has just played in Denmark for the first time ever and the media has just been going gaga over it
). We all nodded in agreement.
Its been way too long.
Yikos wow that's one helleva set
so I want one more chance.