The past week was one of rockin’ glory for Nicosia, since we got to witness two legendary bands live on Cyprus soil for the first time. I’m talking of course about Whitesnake and Tokyo Blade, and while Whitesnake bummed us out with some playback parts, Tokyo Blade would more than make up for it!

The evening began with R.U.S.T., whose explosive live shows I’ve praised more than once on this site. Well this time was no exception! With a fuel tank of tremendous energy, and Panayiotis’ new look being somewhat reminiscent of Wolverine, the guys put on a great show. The guitars were blazing, the rhythm section was booming, and Tasos on vocals put out some truly bone chilling screams! They played a selection of their material including a new track called “Metal Child”, coupled with two covers, one from Accept and –a surprisingly metalised- rendition of the rock classic “Danger Zone” from the Top Gun soundtrack! A solid performance yet again by the young classic metalers, looking forward to their new recordings!

Blynd were up next, a peculiar choice for support act since their style doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the groups. They have a more modern approach close to Machine Head which isn’t my cup of tea, but they were incredibly tight, skilled musically, and the vocalist sure had some set of lungs! If you’re into the aforementioned genre make sure to look them up.

Prodigal Earth followed, another band I’ve often written about in these pages. Playing up to their usual professional standards, the quintet from Nicosia delivered a great power metal show. Kicking off with two new tracks, one of which called “Dragon Soul” (or something like that) was absolutely brilliant epic-ish Europower! They also played two of their older songs, including my fave “Broken World”, and four covers ranging from Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, to Skidrow and Candlemass, on two of which they had guests on stage (x-Armageddon guitarist Kikis Apostolou, and Triple Jam vocalist Francois). Although they delivered them flawlessly, my complaint –as with their previous shows- is that I think they’re way past the covers stage, and they should focus more on their original material, provided their first album is almost done and the second is also on the way! In any case, they have another impressive live performance under their belts! Looking forward to the debut!

And so the time came for Tokyo Blade. I’ll be completely honest, considering they’d been out of commission for ten years, and with just one remaining original member (guitarist Andy Boulton), I wasn’t expecting much. That’s why they caught me unaware, and took my head clean off! Tight as a fist, with Andy delivering all the solos down to the last hammer on, a rock solid rhythm section, and a new singer that sounded like a cross between the band’s first two vocalists, Tokyo Blade granted us a truly best of set list, relying mostly on their first two albums and the Midnight Rendezvous EP, with the addition of a couple of new tracks (which also rocked hard) and a kick ass cover on Rainbow’s “Long live rock n’ roll”. Classics such as “Someone to love”, “Rock me to the limit”, “Lightning Strikes”, “Midnight Rendezvous” were coming at us non stop, while they saved the best for last, with an encore that included the mega anthems “Heaven is Hell” and “Night of the blade” (where I went berserk since it’s one of my favorite songs!). The sound was booming throughout the show (for the support bands as well), except perhaps for the vocal volume which sounded a bit low during the Blade’s appearance, but I can’t tell for sure because I was straight up front and was probably missing out on a couple of monitor’s worth of sound.

All that’s left for me to say is a big THANK YOU from the heart to the band for a brilliant show, and to Phoebus, Paris and Theo, for bringing Tokyo Blade over to Cyprus, another dream come true! Blessed be!

Cheerz to all the good friends I enjoyed the show with (Manillard lives!!), Jimmys for helping out with this article, and Pambos for his analysis on the warcraft paladin :P

THE NEW WAVE OF BRITISH HEAVY METAL LIVES!!!