From: Samuli Vaananen

Kiss started their european leg of the Psycho Circus tour from Helsinki which was kind of surprise to me, because I wasn´t sure would Kiss bother to come in Finland (last time they played here in ´97) ,luckily they did.So I was thrilled to see the Hottest band in the world for the second time. The show was held in 12.000 seat Hartwall Arena and me and my friends arrived there at 4.00pm as doors would be opened at 6.30pm.We weren´t sure how early people would attend there,so we wanted to be sure to get the good places.

As doors opened ,the crowd rushed in and we were lucky enough to get good spots almost in the front row,so we were only about 5-6meters from the stage.

The support was Buck Cherry from La and they rocked quite well,although I was little disappointed because the swedish punk-rockband; Backyard Babies weren´t supporting Kiss as it was originally planned, due some problems with Kiss´management.

Buck Cherry ended their 45min.set about 9.30pm and I was a bit worried ´cause it looked like there were lot of empty seats in the arena.

Fortunaltely lot of people were just obeying their thirst and when the lights were turned down and that low "bassgrowl" started, I noticed that the place was almost sold out so there were about 10000 people there.

Set started with "Psycho Circus" and it sounded a way better than I expected,cause I had previously heard live version of this song only from Dodger Stadium tape and that version sounded a bit muddy to me.But now the sound was perfect;loud and clear, especially compared to Kiss´ earlier visit in Finland during the Alive/Worldwide tour in ´97.

Anyway,after "Psycho Circus" they went straight to "shout it out loud" which made the whole audience jump and sing along,and they played this one surprisingly thight .If I remember correctly,"do you love me?" was the first song to include 3D effects,and although I had read earlier that effects sucked,they worked quite well,especially flying hearts during"do you love me?" were cool.Live 3D parts didn´t work ,at least I couldn´t see them,but there was a rumour that the "3D machines"were set up in a wrong way,so if you had turned the 3D glasses backwards the live 3D parts had worked,well that´s just a rumour...... Unfortunately the other frame of my 3D glasses got broken,so I couldn´t use them properly,but actually I just wanted to watch the band because I was almost in the front row so I didn´t care about the screen and 3D anyway.

The setlist was basically the same as it was on Alive/worldwide tour,only difference was that those three songs were added from "Psycho Circus"album,I kinda hoped that they would have played more new songs but only "Psycho Circus","Into the void" and "Within" were the new ones.It´s kinda stupid because after all this is a "Psycho Circus tour",not "Alive/worldwide tour 2" but I guess Kiss has their reasons.

The band seemed to be a little tired,at least Gene wasn´t so "monsterous"as he could have been.Sure he did all the "tongueflashing"etc.but he stayed more in the backround,leaving space for Paul. And I have to say that Paul did a great job although he had a kneeoperation recently.He jumped and leaped across the stage and most of all; sang brilliantly,he really is a very talented vocalist,definitely one of the best rocksingers of all time.When Paul was excellent,same can´t be said of Ace´s performance.I´m sure he isn´t really sober although everyone says so,he was as spaced-out as allways but this time he was even too muddled. He played sloppier than ever,making little mistakes all the time,and he was fat,maybe bacause of his drinking.But I have to forgive him,he still is my favourite rockstar. Peter was Peter,he shook his head ,smiled and seemed to have fun,but I think there was something weird with his playing.On Alive/Worldwide tour his timing wasn´t very good,but now he had no timingproblems,he didn´t lose the beat at any occasion.Still the drums couldn´t be pre-recorded cause you could really see and hear him playing and saving his strenght for the whole show,so he still played quite carefully.This must be one reason for the lack of new songs in Kiss´setlist,Peter himself said in interview that he didn´t play in all songs in "Psycho Circus" cause he really couldn´t play them,and it´s true that you can hear that it´s definitely not Peter in songs like "Journey of 1000 years" or "Raise your glasses".So cause Peter can´t play all those new songs,probably thatswhy Kiss don´t play those songs live either.But maybe he is developed with his playing or he is in the better shape cause he now can keep the beat.

Back to the show,I have been told that the pyros were different than in the U.S.A,I can´t say nothing about the difference ´cause I haven´t seen the U.S.A shows but there were lot of explosions and sparkshowers during the show,so it really kept the audience entertained.

"Rock and Roll all nite"ended the actual set and I got scared that they wouldn´t play any encores but of course they came back to "Beth","Detroit rock City" and "Black Diamond" as a grande finale with tons of explosions.I had to get couple of rows backwards between the actual set and the encores because a fight broke in the audience after "Rock and Roll all nite".One guy got the Paul´s guitars´ neck and suddenly some big guy behind him started to pull the neck which the other guy was holding,and they started to beat a shit out of each other.I got a little nervous because they were pushing other people as well and the big guy was literally kicking the other guy´s head,luckily the ushers ended the fight. Fantastic show,of course I could complain about the setlist and so on,but Kiss is the only band which can offer a show with great effects and kick-ass rock and roll,so if you want a little bit of rock and roll entertainment,attend to a Kiss concert and go crazy.

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