Apocalyptica Pre-Listening Event
On Nov. 24, I received an email from Universal Rock Webteam, stating that I had won two tickets to the Apocalyptica Listening Event in Cologne on Nov. 30th. The venue for this event was the Kölner Filmhaus on Maybachstrasse in Cologne's MediaPark. A pretty low-tech place but it was cool to hear the new Apocalyptica CD before everyone else - even in low key.
Well, the party started at 20:15 when Eicca and Perttu came on "stage". They made a brief statement, about the album being only two weeks old, and them still having to adjust to it. Get the vibes. And then they started playing the CD!
The CD will contain some very heavy metal songs which make excellent use of the rhythmic drum beats. For my personal taste, those were sometimes a little bit too overwhelming, as I like the old Apocalyptica (without drums) a lot. The heavier songs are followed by a lighter, slower and more romantic or sentimental song. These drastic changes in speed also seemed a bit too huge for me. I would have preferred a sequence of heavy -> medium heavy -> slow -> medium heavy -> heavy as this works better for listening straight through the opus.
This being said - >75% of the new songs are superb!! Some where brutal, some melodic, others somewhere in between. Very much enjoyable and I can imagine myself building my own sort order and listening to this album up and down!
I especially liked the second to last song (title still unknown to me) which had this wonderful, brilliant melody of a piano in the background - which worked extremely well with the cellos. Let this be the next single!!
The first single - Bittersweet, featuring vocalists Ville Valo and Ylönen - is a great sentimental balad with potential to reach the charts (IMHO). It was very well received by the audience and is available on their site for viewing.
After listening through the CD, they went peeing (this is a quote!) and we enjoyed the Bittersweet video on a large screen. Wonderful video - they also showed a B-Roll at the very beginning which was interesting - although not quite as colorful as the original video... I guess they have digitally enhanced the colors here and there?!
After the video finished, they started signing and answering questions. I got my very own copy of Bittersweet signed. Naturelich. The stayed virtually forever to take lots of pictures with fans.
