Original Portuguese version here: http://www.backstageforum.com/t4732-reportagem-epica-stream-of-passion-xandria-hard-club-22-04-2012#30072

» “Karma”, the intro in “Requiem For The Indifferent”, isn’t much longer than one minute and a half, but in concert seemed to me a lot longer. One by one, the members of EPICA took their places on stage and “attacked” “Monopoly On Truth”.

Almost non-stop, they went back to their first full-length, “The Phantom Agony”, with “Sensorium”. The whole concert was a back-and-forth through their discography, obviously with more check-ins at “Requiem…”.

After saying we were “hot” and “steaming”, guitarist/singer Mark Jansen thanked us for allowing them to live from their music – the “thank you” said in our language, as the Portuguese girlfriend of drummer Ariën van Weesenbeek helped him to correct his accent so many times that it became automatic saying it.

Besides the professionalism and sympathy of the musicians, that alone made the concert unforgettable, we also had an excellent light game for a more remarkable visual impact. And new bass player Rob van der Loo, who was forced to stay out of the first gigs of the tour due to health issues, was now back.

Later, Simone Simons said that in those 10 years (not every band achieved that) EPICA had always been welcomed by the Portuguese and that it felt good to be back. She remembered playing in the old Hard Club, “on the other side of the river”, in 2005. And when she asked who else had been there, several arms were raised among the more than 600 people in the venue. She introduced “the last” song, which had also been played back then: “The Phantom Agony”. But there was something different this time: more or less in the middle of the song, the keys suffered a disco-ish remix and the whole band had huge fun jumping and dancing.

Of course it was the last song before the encore, not the very last of the gig. While the crowd screamed for the band and the stage lights were half-lit, a guitar played random riffs, one of them from “our” MOONSPELL – “Alma Matter”.

Keyboard player Coen Janssen was the first one to come back, picking up the mic and saying we weren’t just “a good drink”, we were also “a good audience”. That, as Simone had said, it was great to be back in Porto after “7 thousand years”, in a better Hard Club than the previous one. Personally, I disagree with this comparison, but of course I liked to hear him say that we deserved the best. He promised they’d be back next time, if we promised the same. An explosion of “yeah!” echoed, to which Coen replied that it was a deal.

“Cry For The Moon”, “Unleashed”, a drum solo and “Consign To Oblivion” were the last tracks of a concert that lasted beyond 90 minutes and clearly didn’t let down the most skeptical. «

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