GAMMA RAY Makes Grand Return To Hollywood

By Aniruddh "Andrew" Bansal

My rating points:

February 1st 2011, Key Club, Hollywood CA: It's been a while since Gamma Ray played a show in the LA area, 28 months to be exact. They finally made their long overdue return to these shores tonight, and they couldn't have chosen a venue better than the Key Club, a venue that has given the LA faithful some memorable concerts. Even though it hosts metal shows of all kinds, there is just something special about it when it comes to power metal shows. Bands like Kamelot, Edguy, Doro and Epica have put on some amazing shows here in the recent past. The anticipation surrounding tonight's show was huge, and people were expecting nothing less than perfection from their German metal heroes.

Despite the fact that there was another high profile concert featuring Ozzy Osbourne and Slash going on tonight at the Gibson, the metalheads had turned up to the Key Club in huge numbers, and even the line for the VIP meet-n-greet was reasonably long. After this meet-n-greet was over with, the doors were opened to the public at around 7.30, and the show promptly got going at 8 o' clock. The interesting thing about this tour was that Gamma Ray had chosen to travel all by themselves, and hadn't brought along any support bands with them. As a result, all we had in the form of opening acts tonight was three local bands. Out of these the band worth mentioning is Shadows Entwined, who played third. Their music had the right blend of speed and melody and their on-stage energy was great. Vocalist Tim Anderson was excellent with his crowd interactions in addition to doing a brilliant job on vocals, giving high fives and fist bumps to just about everyone in the front row. At one point he even took a lap around the crowd on his friend's shoulders before returning to the stage. Shadows Entwined truly rocked the audience and provided an apt warm-up for Gamma Ray to take the stage next. This is one band I will keep an eye out for in future shows.

After a brief wait, the Kai Hansen-led quartet took the stage and their arrival was accompanied by the sound of "Welcome", the intro tune from their very first album Heading For Tomorrow". "Gardens Of The Sinner" was the first tune they played tonight, and straightaway the fans were jumping up and down out of sheer joy. "New World Order" followed, and turned out be the first of many songs in the set that got the whole crowd to sing along to the chorus, and even the verse lines in most cases. The lines "This is the time of the ending .. it's the dawn of a new world order" provided some of the "jumpiest" moments of the set. Henjo's solos attracted the air guitarists in the crowd as well, creating a festive sort of atmosphere overall.

It was then time for some new stuff, from the latest album "To The Metal", in the form of "Empathy" and "Deadlands". Empathy is my favorite song from this album, and it was even better live than I had expected it to be. It showcased all the elements that typify Gamma Ray's music, and Kai nailed the varying vocal segments in the song with perfection. While listening to the album at home, this song has always had tremendous repeat value for me, and it was just amazing to experience it live. They went back a couple of albums to bring out "Fight", one of the fastest yet most melodic songs of the set. The song selection was golden so far and I found no reason to complain. This was another song I greatly enjoyed singing along with, as did all my fellow Gamma Ray fans in the crowd.

After those breathtaking three and a half minutes, the latest album was back in prominence. It was good to see them play a considerable portion of the album. It's been successful since its release early last year, hence the songs deserved to be played live. "Mother Angel" followed Fight. It slowed things down slightly, providing almost a hard rock/glam metal sort of twist to the set, which was interesting. After all, who needs to see a band play the same type of song for two hours? Kai and Henjo's twin guitar harmony towards the end of this song was a treat to watch and was one of the visual highlights of the night. "No Need To Cry", another song from the same album, was up next. It was the most mellow tune tonight and showed Kai's abilities with the slower, softer, "ballady" vocal parts as well as bassist Dirk Schalchter on the acoustic guitar for the only time in the set. Dirk then did a segment of the song that was made up of his vocals and acoustic guitar only, as the rest of the band walked off stage to take a well-deserved break.

The much celebrated "Land Of The Free" album was represented next, with "The Saviour/Abyss Of The Void", a glorious epic in every sense of the phrase. A beautiful rendition of that led into Dan Zimmerman's drum solo, after which they brought things back up to full speed with the next song "Armageddon". It was the longest song of the set, but musically the richest as well. The new album was visited one final time tonight, with the title song itself, a great live song that has the potential to turn into a Gamma Ray anthem in years to come. It has a very "Metal Gods" type feel to it, which can't be a bad thing at all. They ended the main set with two crowd favorites, "Rebellion In A Dreamland" and "Man On A Mission". The crowd went absolutely nuts during the chorus segments of Rebellion, during which there were plenty of raising fists to be seen and loud voices to be heard. The band went in after they were done with Man On A Mission, but the look on Kai's face throughout the performance suggested that he and his mates were pleasantly flabbergasted by the amazingly warm reception they were getting tonight, hence an encore was something this crowd demanded and deserved.

They came back out all guns blazing with two Helloween covers, "Ride The Sky" and "I Want Out", enjoyed to the fullest by one and all. "Send Me A Sign" was the last tune of the night, after which they once again showed their appreciation for the crowd before bidding a final goodbye.

The set list was great both in terms of quality and quantity, but I was very surprised to see them leave out "Land Of The Free II" totally, an album that did really well for them when it was released four years back. In fact, it's one of my favorite albums from the past decade and I love each and every song on it. But still, they did enough to make up for that album's absence from the set. Their return to the LA area was a whopping success, and hopefully we won't have to wait another 28 months for their next show.

A thoroughly enjoyable performance. Gamma Ray, we missed you! \m/

Here's their complete set list:

Welcome
Gardens of the Sinner
New World Order
Empathy
Deadlands
Fight
Mother Angel
No Need To Cry
The Saviour
Abyss of the Void
Drum solo
Armageddon
To the Metal
Rebellion in Dreamland
Man on a Mission

Encore:
Ride the Sky (Helloween cover)
I Want Out (Helloween cover)
Send Me A Sign

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