Knowing that the French Power Metal fans outnumber the German ones and are way more enthusiastic, I made sure to arrive in time at the small club in the heart of the famous hill of Montmartre in Paris. Indeed one hour before the doors were opened already a quite big crowd stood in front of the Elysée Montmartre and therefore almost on the street, while a hell lot of cars had to try to get their way through the mass of long-haired and black-clothed people.

One hour and lots of puzzled looks at me and my – also German – friend later the security guys finally opened the door and after another hour of waiting (at this time I wanted to curse the enthusiastic French fans, because in Germany there's hardly any need to go to a Power Metal concert that early) the first tunes of a rather weird-sounding and old-western-movie-inspired intro filled the air – Kotipelto's fellow musicians entered the stage and started to play the intro of Seeds Of Sorrow, which also is the opener of his latest solo album Coldness. Finally Timo Kotipelto himself showed up and started to sing with his so charismatic voice. Right from the beginning one could notice that there's a real pro on stage – Timo sang perfectly as usual end also had hardly any problem to interact with the audience, even though he "just" was support for Kamelot, which he shouldn't be used to after all these years with Stratovarius. Self-confidently he jumped up and down, made the French metalheads scream and sing, and among them was many a guy who wore a Kotipelto-shirt. During the first songs Timo involuntarily made the audience giggle: he wanted to throw his mic from one hand into the other – unfortunately he dropped it and it was unwilling to work afterwards, so he had to run off the stage in the middle of the refrain while the band continued to play, of course grinning. The rest of the song he sang through the mic of his bassist, until one of the roadies brought him a wireless mic again.

Actually this was the second time I saw Timo's solo band playing live for the second time now, and I have to say that they improved a lot since Wacken 2004, because they now really sounded like a band and not like musicians accidentally playing on the same stage. Unfortunately he wasn't able to play with his album-lineup since Mirka Rantanen and Janne Wirman were busy with their own bands, but he found worthy fellow musicians. Especially the string fraction was awesome: bassist Lauri Porra should be known by fans of Sinergy or Warmen and also guitarist Tuomas Wäinölä did a great job, which both showed in stunningly solos.

The biggest surprise of this part of the evening was that Timo didn't just choose many songs from Coldness and some from his debut Waiting For The Dawn, but also the two probably most popular Stratovarius songs. After a well-done keyboard solo the first tunes of Hunting High And Low were heard – the audience of course freaked out and there hardly was anybody who couldn't sing along. For the encore Timo first played the first of course missed Coldness-single Reasons and afterwards, as last song and perfect end of his show, Black Diamond. Unfortunately here the keyboardist lacked a bit of the easiness in which Jens Johansson uses to "celebrate" this song, but nevertheless the audience freaked out again and now was more than just warm for the Dutch epic metal act Epica.

Epica indeed seem to have a lot of fans in France – people totally freaked out when the red-haired beauty Simone Simons with her incredibly strong voice entered the stage. That obviously was the reason why they changed the order in Paris and also in the Netherlands – during the other shows Epica opened the evening. After all Epica indeed surprised me. When I heard about this new female-fronted epic melodic metal band, I was more like "oh no, not again…" so I never ever listened to their stuff; but this evening in Paris they totally blew me away: I can recommend Epica to everyone who thinks that Rhapsody is too cheesy, Xandria too lame, Nightwish too operatic and Tristania too histrionic. Their setlist didn't only contain stuff from their last output The Phantom Agony, but also some new stuff from the new album Consign To Oblivion, which even wasn't out that time. And not later than they announced their hit song Cry For The Moon they managed to convince the last Frenchies – and of course us two "étrangers". This can also be attributed to the immense stage-presence of the young Dutch band: Simone and her guys skilfully banged their heads in front of some ventilators, which made a nice effect especially with the long and red mane of Simone. But while the male part of the audience was stunned because of Simone's beauty, I rather was fascinated by her voice - she has a very strong and classical voice, but doesn't sound excessively dominant, and her singing style perfectly fits to the music of Epica, who also chose their name well thought-out.

After a short period of backfitting the initiators of Epica's name and main act of the evening entered the stage: Kamelot were enthusiastically welcomed by the audience. For the second time now they stopped in the Elysée Montmartre: almost one year ago they also played in the club while supporting Sonata Arctica on their little tour through France. This time being a headliner, they came back with a lot more time to play and some seldom-played pearls among their catalogue. The show started by the opener of Epica, Center Of The Universe, which of course was well-known and therefore loudly sung by the audience, which resulted in an obviously active band. Even though the masters behind the strings didn't run around like the young Dutch fellows from Epica, they seemed to enjoy the evening – and I have to admit that if Roy Khan would have wildly banged like Simone Simons, it would have looked strange with his short hair.

Kamelot's setlist of course mainly was based on the two Faust-Albums Epica and The Black Halo, but nevertheless they covered their older stuff as well. For example they chose a song from the beginning of the Khan-era as second song: Shadow Of Uther might not have been known by everyone, but still the catchy melody of the song was sung along after Roy conducted. After three other rather fast songs, Roy introduced the first breather for audience and band and soon the first tunes of the Epica-ballad Wander were to be heard. Here it became more obvious what I sensed right from the beginning: Roy Khan seemed to have problems with his voice that evening. He wasn't bothered by singing the deeper stuff and also the highest notes were not really a problem, but he had some trouble changing between chest- and head voice. Fortunately he didn't have to do that so often, so the show wasn't affected that much.

Well, the probably best thing about this tour was that Kamelot brought one of the guest musicians of The Black Halo with them: Simone from Epica sang in the song The Haunting on the album (presenting the Margerethe from the Faust story), and so she of course entered the stage again to perform this song together with Roy. Unfortunately her mic didn't work at first (did she take the one destroyed by Timo Kotipelto??), but a roadie soon gave a her working one, and seeing and hearing Roy and Simone together definitely was one of the highlights of the show. And this was not the only guest appearance of the evening: Simone came back to sing the female part in III Ways To Epica, a song that – as Roy said – was performed live about the third time at all, and her fellow musician Mark Jansen, guitarist and grunter of Epica, replaced Dimmu Borgir's Shagrath in March Of Mephisto. This guy spread really good vibes: he seemed so happy to be on stage with Kamelot (or without having to play guitar?) that his smile definitely was infective.

Despite from the nice guest appearances the second highlight of the show was the Karma-ballad Don't You Cry. First of all Roy told that his mother was present that evening, to see her son singing for the first time ever. Then he left the stage to sing the ballad, and climbed on a scaffolding at the side of the hall. Then they recorded the ballad also in French as a bonus song, so Roy started to sing it in English, but switched to French soon and let the audience sing, which of course was quite puzzled by the whole situation. There was many a fan who didn't see Roy sitting on this pylon at all and then there also seemed to be a lot of people who knew the song just in English. Roy of course noticed the confusion and laughed.

But like every nice evening, also this show found its ending, and Kamelot chose the fitting song Farewell for it. The audience gave its best again and this nice evening was ended in a worthy way. And for all who still didn't have enough, Mark, his friends from Epica and later also the guys from Kamelot were there to talk to the fans, sign CDs, shirts and various other stuff and of course to appear on several pictures. Luckily knowing that I would meet these guys again in near future, I left the Elysée Montmartre.

Bochum, Zeche

Having said almost everything about both bands, I will keep this part of the report way shorter, I promise.

Again I arrived quite early, but this time I had an interview date with Timo Kotipelto, so that I had some work and not only to wait for the doors to open. So of course I was convinced that I just couldn't be late – but nevertheless I missed the first 10 minutes or so of Epica's set. This wasn't my fault at all because I just stayed in the small pub next to the hall, talking to some journalists until about 20 past 7, which I thought was a good time because the tickets told that the doors would open at 7 and the first band should play at 8 o'clock. So I guess everyone can imagine how shocked I was that Epica already stood on stage, performing their second song! Since I already saw them in Paris, I wasn't totally pissed but still a bit disappointed, and I don't need to mention how terrible the band must have felt playing in front of about 20 people in the beginning – and also how bad those people must have felt who wanted to see them, arrived at about quarter to eight and had to notice that Epica almost finished their set of 35 minutes! After the show I talked to Mark Jansen again, who surprisingly recognized me from the Paris show, and he wasn't happy about these circumstances either, and wanted to talk to their tour manager about this. Nevertheless Epica, who had to change the place with Kotipelto in Germany, did a nice job again and showed no sign of being pissed.

Same went for Kotipelto: although before the show he told me that Bochum was the place where they sold the fewest tickets at all, the venue was filled with people so that it mustn't have looked too depressing for him who surely got used by sold-out headliner tours with Stratovarius. Again I especially was stunned because of the solos Tuomas and Lauri did – it was incredible what these guys there played! With Timo's reputation it should not have been a problem to find very talented musicians and in fact he hardly could have done a better choice.

After the usual break it was Kamelot's time again, and just like in Paris they did their best. Fortunately Khan's voice sounded a lot better, especially in the beginning. After a while he seemed to have the same problem than in Paris (whatever it was), but it wasn't that worse and he skilfully avoided those dangerous passages. Again he sang the ballad Don't You Cry from a rather unusual position: The Zeche has a nice balcony, from which Roy performed the song, unfortunately but expectedly just in English this time. Also the setlist was a bit shorter in Bochum; but I got to know that for example III Ways To Epica wasn't played at many shows at all, so the Paris guys got something special.

But also this evening had a soon ending after the perfect matching Forever again and Kamelot had to promise to come back before they were allowed to leave the stage. All in all I saw two very cool concerts by three enthusiastic bands full of professional and talented musicians and not only well-known figures of metal like Timo Kotipelto or Roy Khan but also Timo's band and the young fellows of Epica arranged these nice hours.