8

It's Kiuas not Kius

When a band comes on to music from Monty Python and the Holy Grail you know they aren't taking themselves too seriously. I said in my review of Chris Slade that first on isn't the most difficult slot, I think that this is the most difficult, third on and we've had bad AC/DC and good death metal, people have relaxed a bit and you have something to follow so you need to come out swinging. Kiuas (don't mispronounce it) are Finnish and like a lot of bands from Finland they like to incorporate some of their pagan heritage into their music, not massively like Korpiklaani but it's there.

First thing that hits you is how much better the sound has suddenly become compared to both of the previous bands, it's like someone has suddenly found the button that turns off the shit filter and everything has come clean, you can hear everything clearly so you perk up straight away, Kiuas aren't very energetic preferring to just stand fairly static and blast out some solid keyboard heavy metal, their matching bald guitar and bass player balance each other out on either side of the stage and play some mean riffs. Clean singing, Ilja Jalkanen, tries hard to get the crowd going but the crowd isn't playing ball, perhaps if they all ran around the stage a bit more the crowd would have felt inspired to follow suit but as it is they are content to stand and watch.
By the end I was left with the feeling that Kiuas were good at what they did but unfortunately on this occasion failed to connect with the crowd, or maybe it's the other way round and the crowd failed them a bit