(Amorphis, from their 1992 debut album The Karelian Isthmus)

This past Monday was a great day for metal! I finally got to see Amorphis live! That is, after travelling through the grime of south Chicago to reach a suburb called Mokena... (hence the title of this post). The show was supposed to be held at a small venue called The Pearl Room, but for some unknown reason the venue was closed and they moved the show next door to a place called Capone's. And it was, well... small. Very small. In spite of the small venue, the acoustics were actually not half bad, and you can't beat seeing a band you love playing 5 feet in front of your face on a floor stage!

Having never seen Amorphis before, I wasn't sure what kind of show we'd get. I was hoping for a mixed show with both some rockers and some of the more progressive material such as that on Elegy and Far From the Sun. What we got was a rocker only (no acoustic or heavily progressive selections), but they still put on a good set list with solid choices from both the latest two albums that their current singer Tomi Joutsen originally recorded, as well as several of the classics, which Joutsen did a good job of covering.

I'll see if I can recall the set list, though not in order:

• I of Crimson Blood (Silent Waters)
• Silent Waters (Silent Waters)
• House of Sleep (Eclipse)
• The Smoke (Eclipse)
• Alone (Am Universum)
• Against Widows (Elegy)
• Into Hiding (Tales From the Thousand Lakes)
• Black Winter Day (Tales From the Thousand Lakes)
• Misery Path??? (The Karelian Isthmus)

I know they played something from The Karelian Isthmus, and I think it was "Misery Path" but I'm not entirely sure. It might have been "The Sign From the North Side". I'm also probably forgetting one song or another. I'll update the list if I have some kind of revelation or something...

I was just thrilled they came out there so I could finally catch a show of them! They don't do that many locations on their U.S. tour usually, and this was almost certainly not even worth their plane tickets based on crowd turnout. It was weak. Either Chicagoans have no taste for metal, or they're a city of 8 million top-40'ers who don't stray from what MTV tells them to listen to. Or maybe they're all gay and only go to Rod Stewart and Elton John concerts (in defense of this, I did get caught in the middle of a big gay pride parade the previous time I was in Chicago). Who knows...