Hey, atleast it was only 45 minutes
After a slightly over long symphonic intro, the second band of the day, an Italian group called Secret Sphere, took to the stage. A thunderous drum roll gave way to some typically melodious keyboards, and the biggest disappointment of the day began.
Secret Sphere's performance wasn't aided by the poor sound they suffered from. The guitars were a muddy and largely inaudiable fuzz, and their female guest vocalist could only be heard for about ten percent of their short set. Overall, this was a forty minute wall of noise overlaid with a little sprinkling of melody. This sort of sound might work for a death metal band, but not for the cheesy melodic metal that Secret Sphere play. Add to this the piercing feedback, and it was a wonder anyone was left in the venue after ten minutes.
My other major gripe with Secret Sphere was their heavy reliance on backing tapes. Now, I understand that it's not really viable for even a well known band to take a full orchestra on the road, and much less so for a group of unknowns, but relying on a recording for your acoustic guitar parts, as they did during 'Leonardo Da Vinci', just smacks of laziness.
Yet despite these rather major issues, Secret Sphere seemed to go down well overall. The crowd sang along to 'Dance With the Devil', and even 'Legend', which aside from pretty but difficult to hear keyboard part, was rather dull, seemed to prove popular. However, with the underwhelming material and terrible sound, the enthusiasm of the first few songs seemed not to last, and many people seemed bored by the end – myself included.