The Rasmus

After their Carling Weekend appearance- you would have understood if The Rasmus decided never to tour the UK again after putting up with bottles being thrown and various members of the crowd booing them off stage- not because they were crap- but because they thought The Rasmus were inappropriate for that festival.

Thankfully they decided to still do a UK tour, and to see The Rasmus playing to a crowd of genuine fans is just amazing- no bottles, no boo-ing, just thousands of people having a great time.



As the houselights went down in anticipation for the arrival of The Rasmus, the stage came alive with strobe lights and atmospheric smoke. The centre of the stage was covered in a herculian white backdrop- the band were standing behind the curtain- and through the strobe lights you could see their silhouettes emblazoned onto the white backdrop.

Once the crowd had been worked into a near hysterical frenzy- the curtain dropped to reveal the band standing on raised platform with ramps leading down to the front of the stage - it was pretty obvious this was going to give the band plenty of chances to run around and create an exciting, energetic feeling to the gig.


'Guilty' got the proceedings underway, and the audience were all in awe of their gothic rock god. Worshipping every word that popped out of his mouth. As you would expect they were running around from one side of the stage to the other- up the ramps and around the back of the stage and by the time they had reached their third song of the night 'Everyday'- Lauri (vocalist) and the rest of the band were all dripping with sweat.

Their set consisted of most of their big hits from 'Dead Letters' and then some of their older tracks taken from their album 'Into' and even included a few obscure tracks taken from 'Hell Of A Collection'. There were times throughout the night that if you scanned across the audience during their older tracks it was easy to spot who were genuine loyal fans and who had just come to here them because of the songs from 'Dead Letters'.



The biggest surprise for me was when the entire band came and sat at the front of the stage to do a slow acoustic version of 'The One I Love' (this isn't a cover version of REM's classic). After they had finished this, they ploughed straight back into their more up-tempo material and that is how it remained for the nearly the entire night- fast paced, exciting, exhilarating. Then things moved up to an even higher gear when the melodic vocal intro of 'In The Shadows' kicked in. The place went wild.

The Rasmus certainly earned their money with this performance, they are one of those bands that are masters of live shows.

FUTURE GIGS