LIVE AT TAVASTIA

This is a very nice live album by Finnish band led by brothers Von Hertzen, who have been creating music since the start of the millenium, delivering so far nine studio albums, so I believe it was about time they decided to release a register of one of their live concerts.

'Live at Tavastia' was released early on 2024, which is why here we cannot find any song from 'In Murmuration', their latest studio album which was released in the final quarter of the same year. What we will find here is a collection of 13 songs the band has release throughout the past 15 years, avoiding their first records from the 00's decade, and focusing more on most recent efforts. The album lenght's around 80 minutes of nice art rock / prog rock with a very modern essence.

It was natural they decided to highlight their most recent album at that time, 'Red Alert in the Blue Forest' released in 2022, so the very first part of the live performance focuses on that album, having as a result a nice combo of three songs, the three first songs of that album in order, no more, no less. I believe my favorite moment from that batch is 'Blue Forest', which sounds great, powerful in moments, subtle in others, but the musicianship is always great.

Then they begin to play some songs from previous albums, like 'Frozen Butterflies' or 'Jerusalem', taken off their 2017 record 'War is Over', I like the introduction of the earlier, which adds a folkish sound to the modern prog one, quite nice. They come and go, I mean, 'Peace Patrol' was a recent track and once they got warmth they included it on the setlist, bringing a lot of energy in the stage, an energy I am sure was caught by the audience because to my ears, this is one of the highlights of this live record; and the journey through the past decade continues with older songs such as 'You Don't Know My Name' or 'Flowers and Rust', the latter being one of the people's favorites.

Something I like about live records is the human sound, I mean, the interactions between artist and crowd, and though I don't understand a word (I assume is Suomi what I listen when they speak), it is nice to see the musicians speaking to the audience and receive the excitement and gratitude in form of applauses, shouts or noises. Also, like in 'New Day Rising', it is great how the crowd gets involved with the music, clapping at the song's rhythm. Those human aspects definitely enrich the experience.

Also, there are some videoclips of this concert available on their Youtube channel, such as the one that closes the show, 'Sunday Child', so it is nice they let us be with them in a figurative way, so when we watch the videos, we can feel a bit closer and be part of the crowd.

A very nice live album,