The highlight of this weekend was the Therion concert. Therion came to Dublin with a 7 man stage (2 female sopranos Katarina Lilja and Lori Lewis, 2 vocalists, drummer, bassist, guitar player), which was probably the densest stage I’ve ever seen so far. All the members are great showmen/women, and each one has his/her own act, either inciting the crowd, being funny or being just a treat to eye and ears. The funniest member was the blond gothic freak Snowy Shaw (Notre Dame) who had his own subshow during the gig.

They started the show with Mitternacht Lowe the first song on Gothic Kabbalah. Most of the songs were from this album, since this was the album tour that’s more than understandable. There were some problems with the sound at a certain point, especially during one of my favourite songs Perennial Sophia. My favourite songs of the concert were “Rise of Sodom and Gomorrah” and “To Mega Therion”, which was the last song they played. After a lot of shouting for an encore, they came back and played a Manowar cover version. I didn’t recognise the song but since all Manowar songs are pretty much the same sing along structure it was easy to lalala and jump to it.

After the concert we stayed over drinking some beer, and all of a sudden I spotted the girls from the band buying beer. We met the rest of the band who were welcoming photos freely, and we even attempted to get some snaps with the phone. The results weren’t spectacular but at least I’ve got proof that I was there. I made the amateur mistake of not taking a pen with me so I didn’t get an autograph. Piihhhhhhh.

I vegetated for the rest of the weekend. I watched almost all the Rugby World Cup matches and wasn’t impressed in the least by Ireland playing Georgia. Ireland barely managed to win and had a bad time trying to overcome the strong determination of the ex Soviet nation. Meanwhile both New Zealand and France made a complete mess of their opponents Portugal and Namibia respectively. Probably the most balanced game of the weekend was Tonga against Samoa, the Pacific Islands derby. (Interesting note: Samoa > Tonga in size and population. Both Islands are bigger than the dot but have less population). Yesterday evening we went to the shopping centre and I couldn’t resist the lure of the sushi belt. Delicious sushi dinner, even though the sushi belt isn’t the cheapest way to eat sushi.