SONATA ARCTICA, Pythia, Neonfly @Birmingham Institute Library 16/4/13

RTM makes no secret of our love for Neonfly. Over the years the band just keeps on getting better and better. Last year they released the “Outshine The Sun” record, which was immediately one of our favourites of the year. Being on tours like this can only help raise their profile. The band appear to know it too, as they have broken off the recording of album number two to be here tonight. Songs such as “The Enemy,” “Ship With No Sail” and set closer “Morning Star” surely cannot fail to win over an audience such as this and happily the one new song they play “The Heart Of The Sun” gives notice that the sophomore effort might be just as good as the debut. Ones – we very much hope – to watch.

About a year ago we saw Dragonforce make their comeback in this very building. The support band they chose for the evening, which was in the smaller room upstairs, was Pythia. The Londoners came out dressed in armour and featured Emily Ovenden, trained opera singer, as vocalist. We weren’t overly keen on the group then and we still aren’t. They lack the class and guile of bands like Nightwish and while tracks like “The Heartless” are ok, there seems to us, to be something missing.

Melodic Power Metal is perhaps one of rocks oddest genres. One that never seems to cross over into the mainstream, but one that gets the punters in. The Library is full by the time Finlands Sonata Arctica take the stage.

Perhaps surprisingly they have been doing this for getting on for twenty years and there is an easy confidence about the group – led by vocalist Tommy Kakko - throughout. Other things we weren’t expecting from the band were just how much heavier they were live than on record and also how much fun they appeared to be having. You might expect if you just listened to the CD’s the whole thing to be a little po-faced, but not a bit of it! Kakko has clearly been to the Chuck Billy school of playing air guitar with his mic, doing so throughout, while the whole good-fun vibe of the evening is topped off by a spot of Russian dancing during “Cinderblox.”

Of course, it doesn’t matter how much fun the band are having if the songs don’t cut it, thankfully Arctica have good and interesting tunes in abundance. Roughly half of the set comes from latest album “The Stones Grow In Her Name” including opener “Only The Broken Hearts Make You Beautiful” and the superb  “I Have A Right” which features some fine harmony vocals.

It just wouldn’t be Power Metal though, if there wasn’t some epic balladry, and Sonata have a couple of these, pianos get used liberally in “In The Day” while towards the end they give “Tallulah” an airing, a massive lighters-in-the-air thing, which sees Kakko joking that the men in the crowd might want to go and something else for a while.

“Don’t Say A Word” brings the evening to a close, completely with a slightly daft outro, involving Vodka, which for our money is the only thing that didn’t quite work all night. Supremely talented musicians - Elias Viljanen on lead guitar perhaps the pick of the bunch – Sonata Arctica don’t need gimmicks. They were excellent this evening. One of those nights where you go in to a gig quite liking a band and come out a fan.

DRAGONFORCE, Pythia 18/4/12 @The Temple Birmingham

If it isn’t strange enough that Dragonforce are playing their only headline UK show until the autumn and doing so in the smallest room in The Institute (this is partly explicable by the fact that it’s a Kerrang sponsored gig and their radio station is just up the road) then surely its verging on the downright weird that this show is being billed as an album release show for the astonishingly good “The Power Within” record, but the aforementioned opus isn’t on sale at the merch stand.  

Not surprisingly, the small venue has resulted in a sold out show and most are in place to see London’s Pythia. The symphonic power metal band feature four fellas dressed in armour and lead singer, the classically trained Emily Ovenden. Not being familiar with the classical world RTM hasn’t come across her before, but she apparently has sold half a million records.

It is immediately clear that she is the group’s star turn and songs like “Kiss The Knife” are lapped up by the crowd.

The lack of loud music being played through the PA before the bands is another of the evening’s oddities, so Dragonforce’s intro tape interrupts people talking amongst themselves. But once they are on, the sense of excitement is palpable.

Here is a band that were on the verge of a real mainstream breakthrough, but have undergone something of a rebuild. Frontman ZP Theart has gone, to be replaced by Marc Hudson, who was introduced to the world at their support shows with Iron Maiden last year.

Now they are back, and “The Power Within” is a bolt statement of intent. A fine power metal album, it is pompous (and that is a compliment), technically superb and catchy. Not surprisingly, since this is a launch show, a track from “…Within” kicks us off. “Die By The Sword," in many ways this is a song that sums up where Dragonforce are in 2012.

There are four more songs from the new album played, including the single “Cry Thunder” and the almost thrash in tone “Fallen World.” These mix comfortably with the older material like “Operation Ground and Pound” and “Fury Of The Storm.”

There are – it seems – some subtle changes from the last time we saw the band. Back in the those days you were highly likely to see guitarists Sam Trotman and Herman Li trying to trip each other up as they played their solo’s, this time they are playing it more straight – although whether this is a strategy or just because there is no space on the tiny temple stage remains to be seen. That said, this a group that still has tongues a little in cheeks and who are clearly having fun.

Hudson has slotted in seamlessly and is a fine singer. And as the band returns for an encore of perhaps its best-known moment “Through The Fire and Flames,” which they follow up with “Valley of the Damned” it is clear that this could be a group with its best years ahead.

A fine evening that not even a string of technical issues could spoil,  ends with us walking past some pop group we’ve never heard of that have been playing downstairs and out into the street, where somebody is handing out fliers for the live debut of I am I. This new bands singer? ZP Theart. In metal it seems, the more things change the more they stay the same.

Roll on the autumn tour.