Venue: The Underworld, Camden, London        Date: 3rd March, 2002

Demon Setlist: The Plague, Writings on the Wall, Dreamtime, Don't Break The Circle, Streetwise Cowboy, BlackHeath, Spaced Out Monkey, Life on The Wire, Night of The Demon.  Encore: One Hell of A Night

Tad Morose Setlist (approx): I Know Your Name, Another Time Around, Miracle, Sender Of Thoughts, Matters of the Dark, Sword of Retribution(I think), Where the Sun Never Shines, Corporate Masters + encore

Having heard a few mp3s of both bands, I was persuaded by friends that this would be a concert well worth attending. However, upon entering The Underworld it would appear that the great power metal revival, which I thought was happening here in London, seems to be running out of steam.  Since the Iced Earth concert in mid January the turnouts for subsequent gigs, such as Kamelot and now this gig have been diminishing worryingly quickly. There were barely 100 people present - including bands, journos, bar staff etc - certainly not 100 paying punters; very disappointing.

To demonstrate just how sparse the crowd was, it suffices to say that the two main bands formed the hard-core of the crowd for each others' performances, standing close to the stage and cheering on each other while the paying audience stayed at a distance.  Both bands had brought camcorders and filmed each others performances, complete with end of tour stage antics.  They certainly had fun, it was just a shame that the crowd didn't appear to.

Demon were at least on home turf and received a good response from their fans, a number of whom had clearly traveled to catch them live, and it was during their set that the crowd numbers appeared to be at their high point.  Having emerged in the 1980s, they played a solid, catchy, melodic hard rock which reflected those times with the odd nod to the sounds of the 1970s. They were very good to listen to, without ever really being exceptional.

Guitarist Steve Brookes impressed with some very melodic guitar solos while singer and main man Dave Hill also impressed with his vocals and personality.  Tunes like 'Dreamtime' and 'BlackHeath' stood out, while too many tunes started well only to have the same lyrics of the chorus being repeated far to often for my liking and it was material like 'Streetwise Cowboy' and particularly 'Spaced Out Monkey', from their most recent album, which was the least impressive.

After a twenty minute break we got Tad Morose; a power metal five-some from the land with an endless conveyor-belt of talent - Sweden.  Having started as a doom metal outfit; a change of singer and the dropping of keyboards in favour of a permanent second guitarist has seen the band become a very solid and, some people say, a more generic power metal outfit.

Once again the crowd seemed very unwilling to get close to the stage and even the band's number one fan was happier to remain at a high vantage point to film the show, rather that to get up close. As the Swedish crew had faithfully encouraged the Brits throughout their performance, the members of Demon returned the favour, with wives and girlfriends in tow.  Eventually a few other folks joined them, but evidently a good number of the crowd had left after Demon and then continued to drift away throughout Tad Morose's set. To see the crowd thinning as you play must have been a dispiriting sight for their final show of the tour...

This five piece certainly know how to rock, and the dual guitar attack of Christer Andersson and Daniel Olsson is particular impressive, producing the solid wall of sound in a similar way that Karl Groom and Nick Midson do for Threshold. Vocalist Urban Breed struck a huge Viking-like figure and has the lungs to match, producing a very powerful yet tuneful performance, with not too many trademark power metal screams.

It was the band's first gig in the UK, but they certainly showed no nerves and set about enjoying themselves. The band bounced around what is a fairly small stage with a certain amount of abandon, but even that was too restricting for guitarist Christer, who spent the duration of 'I Know Your Name' and 'Sender Of Thoughts' jumping around in amongst the crowd in various parts of the venue.

The show turned out to be a little on the short side, just ten tunes in all and a little over an hour of music, with the band covering material mainly from their last two albums, both of which feature the current vocalist. The most impressive tunes were those from their most recent release 'Matters of the Dark' with the title track, 'I Know Your Name' and 'Sword of Retribution' standing out.  What was disappointing was Urban Breed's between song banter which turned all too quickly into cursing, faced with the rather deadpan audience ... Must do better.

Clearly two very competent bands with decent material, but tonight the crowd (or absence of one) made for a rather damp squib of an end of tour party.

Charlie