The 69 Eyes live in Tampere
Black Royal, The 69 Eyes
Klubi, Tampere, Finland
9th September 2016
The 69 Eyes is a band that reminds me of my teenage years; takes me back to a time when I had posters of bands such as HIM and The Crow movie on my bedroom wall. I used to love the albums from their Gothic rock period, especially ‘Blessed Be’ and ‘Paris Kills’. I still revisit their music occasionally but sadly I lost track of them after the ‘Devils’ album.
Then a few days ago I discovered that they were coming to play a show here in Tampere. So naturally I jumped at the opportunity. Unlike HIM who I saw live when I was a teenager, I’ve never been to a 69 Eyes show before.
The warm-up was a local death metal band called Black Royal. They had a relatively short set so there’s not a hell of a lot that I can say about them. They reminded me a little of Entombed but their music had more melodic elements, like a mixture of death metal and heavy metal. Not a bad start to the night. 3/5
The “Helsinki Vampires” took to the stage fashionably late but the wait proved to be worth it. I was pleased to find out that they actually played quite a lot of the older material including classic goth’n’ roll songs such as: The Chair, Gothic Girl, Wasting the Dawn and Feel Berlin. Frontman Jyrki69 was keen to point out that some of their music videos were actually shot in Tampere. One of them is Brandon Lee, which happens to be one of my personal favorites – they played it as an encore. Another highlight of the evening was the beautifully dark love song Dance D’Amour. I had a great time dancing to the same songs that first captured my attention all those years ago. 5/5
In summary I’m really happy that I finally got to see these guys live. A lot has changed since I was a teenager, I’m not the same person that I was back then but their music has stayed with me and I continue to enjoy it.
Iza Raittila
Valkyrian Music 
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