Tankard & Zenith
Venue: The Rock, Copenhagen
Date: January 20th 2007

Zenith

The Copenhagen band Zenith opens the night with their very heavy and groovy music. There’s certainly guitar in abundance, and lead singer Jay is a quite good growler. 

Zenith is clearly inspired by bands like Pantera, Life of Agony and Korn, and their crossover compositions do get both clever and technically challenging at times. 

At the end of the day though, the concert left the impression that even though they are competent musicians, their songs seem a bit unfocused - as if they want to put a whole CD in every song they write. Furthermore, Jay looked like a small boy who had been sent to the naughty corner instead of a potent, growling heavy metal lead vocalist. He simply did not get one centimeter across the stage edge.

Score: 46

Tankard

What a live band! I was completely taken by surprise when these German veterans entered the stage. This was party thrash at its very best. 

Almost all of Tankards lyrics revolve around the topic of beer, or at least some reference to alcohol or being drunk. Naturally, they don’t aim to be taken seriously, which was clearly demonstrated throughout the concert by lead singer Gerre, who kept slapping his rather voluminous (beer) belly with the microphone. They do play their music seriously though, and both their sound and stage show was just as it should be. By that I mean that the jokes were awful, and the whole atmosphere was - well, kind of Oktoberfest-ish, really. 

Both the band and the crowd were in a very good mood, and Gerre eventually went for a stage dive at the end of the show. This proved to be a bit of a struggle for the audience, since he weighs in at 120kg – at least! 

One of the best “value for money” concerts I’ve been to (tickets cost only kr. 90).

Score: 77