Grave Digger’s Triumphant Return to Zagreb for the 30th Anniversary of “Tunes Of War” (2026)
Performing: Crystallion, Power Surge, Grave Digger
Date: Thursday, 23 April 2026
Venue: Zagreb / Boogaloo / Croatia
Grave Digger made it to Croatia for the fourth time in their storied career on 23 April 2026! As part of a short Balkan run, they were performing the entire “Tunes Of War” album in full — this year marks a full 30 years since its release. One of the most beloved power metal albums of all time! A genre-defining cult classic! The band is using these dates as a warm-up, because early next year comes another, far more extensive “Tunes Of War” tour, focused primarily on Germany.
But hold on. The last time Grave Digger visited Croatia — 5 April 2011 — it didn’t exactly leave an indelible mark on our memory. They played Boogaloo that time too, and the place was depressingly poorly attended. I don’t think you could have counted 200 people in that club. The show itself was correspondingly flat — professional enough, done by the book, but nothing beyond that. Fifteen years later, the band was back in the Croatian capital. This time, the story was completely different.
The evening was opened by Germans Crystallion, who can rightfully be called veterans in their own right — they’ve been at it for a solid 20 years and have five studio albums behind them. Crystallion are currently on a tour called “Crossing The Danube,” which runs throughout the year. Fate had it that the Zagreb promoter linked them up with Grave Digger, and the same pairing played Belgrade the following night. While Slovenia is still waiting for Crystallion’s debut show there (announced for Maribor on 23 October 2026), the valiant quintet had already played Croatia for the very first time the day before Zagreb, taking over the Pula club Kotač (guess how much the ticket cost? Answer: €8.00). The band operates in a revamped lineup — bassist Steve Hall and drummer Martin Herzinger remain from the original members, while new faces fill out the quintet: vocalist Tony Sunclear and guitarists Sven Sevens and Thomas Meyns.
In 45 minutes, Crystallion proved that the energy in the revamped quintet is the real deal. They’re tight, the performances are polished to the finest detail, and the sound was very well dialed in. The guys threw themselves across the stage with everything they had and didn’t much care that Boogaloo was barely filling up. They played with passion and a lot of heart, so there was simply no way the set could disappoint. The band spread the setlist evenly across all five albums. Among them, the debut “A Dark Enchanted Crystall Nights” is considered a power metal classic — it turns 20 this year. Tears in the Rain and Burning Bridges, which closed the set, were both present and accounted for! An energy-packed, high-octane, hard-hitting showcase of their own brand of power metal — something you could describe as a mix of fellow Germans Freedom Call with an occasional dash of Italy’s Rhapsody Of Fire. An excellent opener!
Power Surge are an international outfit formed by a quintet of seasoned musicians. The formation is new and has debut album “Shadow Warning” in the bag, but it’s built by a crew with serious road miles on the clock. Two Serbs, a Czech, a Croat, and an Englishman. Rökindja Nikolić on vocals is a top-tier frontman and crowd magnet who wins people over fast. He also has an excellent sense of humor that keeps the audience entertained between songs. But of course, it’s the quintet’s performance that counts. And it was phenomenal. The band played through almost the entire debut, and midway through the set they spiced things up when Greek vocalist Tasoz Lazaris — who normally sings for Erase and Fortress Under Siege — joined them on stage to deliver duets on the original A Dream Into A Nightmare and then the Warriors cover Carry On. Tasoz, whose slightly reddish hair could seriously put him in the running against Mick Hucknall of Simply Red, demonstrated some lethally high-flying vocal melodies that seasoned the show beautifully. But it also needs to be said that as revivalists, Power Surge stir up strong associations with old-school American speed metal and the era when N.W.O.B.H.M. first burst onto the scene. The band charged furiously, relentlessly, with vehement punch. Tight as a unit. Backed by an excellent sound in the club. In one word: brilliant! Toward the end, they cranked up the energy in Boogaloo even further with a Dokken cover — Unchain The Night.
But the vast majority came to Boogaloo that evening to hear the live performance of the Grave Digger classic “Tunes Of War.” It comes as no surprise that the bulk of Slovenian metalheads who regularly make the trip to every concert without growl vocal content showed up in Zagreb too. Boogaloo was excellently packed that night. Another hundred tickets sold and it would’ve been a sell-out. Great turnout.
Grave Digger are legends of Teutonic metal, one of those original bands on the German scene who were slinging metal from the very beginning. The trilogy of “Tunes Of War,” “Knights Of The Cross,” and “Excalibur” is a chapter of its own in their career. The band took the stage in the lineup led by the great chief, leader and vocalist Chris Boltendahl — Grave Digger is simply unthinkable without him — with loyal Jens Becker on bass by his side since 1997, with the quartet completed by drummer Marcus Kniep and guitarist Tobias Kersting, who came on board in 2023, having previously played with power metal outfit Orden Ogan.
Fifteen minutes past ten, the band boldly launched the club into the stratosphere when they tore into the full performance of “Tunes Of War” — and it’s worth noting that longtime devotees got to hear some tracks from the album that Grave Digger play very, very rarely or have never played live at all. Braveheart, for instance, hadn’t been played live in over 25 years. The only absence was the instrumental Cry for Freedom (James the VI). In short: the wildest dreams of most fans, realized. And the response matched every bit of it. Deafening. The band was clearly having the time of their lives. Boltendahl and crew were radiating tremendous good vibes — no doubt a direct result of the excellent turnout and the ecstatic crowd reactions.
Chris navigated the demands of his distinctive vocal style very well. He’s extremely experienced, and even in the passages that call for his trademark growl combined with real pitch, he cleverly adjusted his lines and kept the vocal performance credible throughout. A few small slips and rough edges could be detected — in The Ballad of Mary and in the second half of the show, at the opening of Morgane le Fay — but these are minor things not worth getting hung up on.
In the second half the atmosphere didn’t fade or falter one bit. The band stayed firmly in the medieval trilogy! There’s the furious Knights Of The Cross — an iron fixture of the setlist — and The Curse Of Jacques, an excellent but often overlooked track from the “Knights Of The Cross” album that Grave Digger don’t bring out often. Then comes the expected detonation with another iron Grave Digger classic — the superior The Round Table! Grave Digger charge forward toward the title track of “Excalibur,” the whole room roaring the chorus along with the band, all the way to the finale, which in the encore exploded in pure, raw style. Grave Digger took us back to the very start of their career. The first half of the eighties. As expected: Headbanging Man, Witch Hunter, and Heavy Metal Breakdown, which the band stretched out a little at the end to wring the very last atoms of reaction from the wildly fired-up crowd.
This was one of those Grave Digger concerts that the author of this piece ranks among his personal favorites in all his meetings with the band. And there have been no small number of those. To single out just three — Treviso (Italy), 26 February 2002; Ljubljana (Slovenia), 19 January 2004; Bang Your Head!!! festival (Balingen, Germany), 10 July 2014 — this Zagreb show comes very, very close to each and every one of them. Grave Digger are maintaining an enviable form well into their mature years, as this Zagreb performance confirmed, so I can only hope we run into the legendary Chris Boltendahl and his crew again soon — say, in two years at most, for them to perhaps play the entire “Knights Of The Cross” album for us.
Authors: Edita Klemen & Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Power Surge – setlist:
1. Breathe New Life
2. Last Man Standing
3. No Turning Back
4. With The Dawning
5. Calm Before The Storm
6. A Dream Into A Nightmare
7. Carry On (orig. Warriors)
8. Burnout
9. Unchain The Night (orig. Dokken)
10. Shadows Warning
Grave Digger – setlist:
1. The Brave (Intro)
2. Scotland United
3. The Dark of the Sun
4. William Wallace (Braveheart)
5. The Bruce
6. The Battle of Flodden
7. The Ballad of Mary (Queen of Scots)
8. The Truth
9. Killing Time
10. Rebellion (The Clans Are Marching)
11. Culloden Muir
—second half—
12. Knights Of The Cross
13. The Curse Of Jacques
14. The Round Table (Forever)
16. Morgane le Fay
16. Excalibur
—encore—
17. Headbanging Man
18. Witch Hunter
19. Heavy Metal Breakdown
