Performers: Bloodbound, Sabaton, HammerFall
Location: Zagreb / Boogaloo / Croatia
Date: 08.04.2009
The concrete yard in front of Zagreb’s Boogaloo club can be a pretty interesting and surprising place about an hour before showtime. HammerFall’s guitarists’ picks come raining down from the sky (or rather from the backstage window above) on unsuspecting fans, and in between the roadies, tour managers and promoters rushing off in every direction, you might even get the Bloodbound frontman wandering up and chatting with you about totally everyday stuff. After an extensive interview with Pontus Norgren (HammerFall), Aleš and I settled into a relaxed chat with Urban breed (the lowercase “b” in his surname is deliberate), who’s probably better known as the former vocalist of Tad Morose than for Bloodbound, and picked up plenty of fascinating details about life as a touring musician (see the interview). After the obligatory photo session, Urban pretty much shot straight from behind the table we were sitting at onto the stage, and the spectacle in a solidly packed Boogaloo was on.
| BLOODBOUND: |
Bloodbound are a relatively young but already fairly established Swedish band, and their biggest trump card is the aforementioned Urban. The charismatic singer showed no signs of the damaged vocal cords he’d complained about during our chat, and you could even say his confident performance outshone both of the frontmen who came on after him, vocally speaking.
Credit especially goes to Urban for not “holding back”, unlike, say, Joacim Cans, and for treating us to the high registers more than once, the kind that many metal vocalists, especially the older ones, often prefer to dodge live in order to “save” their throats. The rest of the band, mostly seasoned musicians and old hands of the world’s stages (you can read more about that in the Rockline report from Maribor), didn’t lag behind either, and even though they only played for half an hour, they thrilled the crowd below the stage, which was hungry for real power metal. Just like the day before in the capital of Slovenian Styria, the band played five songs from their three albums Nosferatu, Book of the dead and Tabula rasa, and then, amid loud cheers, had to quickly clear the stage for the eagerly awaited Sabaton.
| SABATON: |
The Sabaton phenomenon is hard to explain in a few lines. With a well-honed musical philosophy and smart marketing, the band has built up an enviable army of fanatical followers all over the world in less than ten years, and the effect of that calculated strategy was strongly felt in Zagreb. The euphoria they set off as they hit the stage is comparable to what only the biggest mainstream stars get, and it’s something we rarely witness, at least in this form, at gigs like this. Frontman Joakim Broden noticed it too, and had to interrupt his usual routine between songs, made up of a goofing-around monologue and showing off his crotch (which he happily did already in Maribor), to sincerely thank the crowd and the Zagreb Sabaton fan club.
The excitement peaked during the heroic Attero dominatus, which had us reliving the Battle of Berlin, Primo victoria, which brought back the Normandy landings, and Metal machine, which, despite its telling title, unlike the band’s other songs isn’t about historical military clashes. The sound was top-notch, and the guitars of Sundén and Montelius were as sharp as the bayonets on the rifles of the First World War battlefields, where we were taken by Cliffs of Gallipoli and Price of a mile. The band, which you could call a kind of Swedish answer to Manowar, reaped a thunderous applause after a good three quarters of an hour and set off a wave of ovations that might well have made HammerFall wonder whether it wouldn’t be better to hand the headliner spot over to Sabaton in the future. But that wasn’t the only problem the stars of the evening had to deal with.
| HAMMERFALL: |
The biggest and probably most unpleasant technical mishap that can happen to a singer on stage is having the mic die on you right as you march heroically out from behind the curtain for the opening song, after a pompous intro of laser effects and other audio-visual trickery. That’s exactly what happened to Joacim Cans at the start of HammerFall’s set, so after the first song, Punish and enslave, during which the poor Cans ran helplessly around the stage and glanced anxiously toward the mixing desk, the masters of northern metal had to stop the show for a few minutes. The Sabaton fans took full advantage, trying to summon their favorites back to the stage once more, but once the problems were fixed, Dronjak and company shut them up with the mighty Crimson thunder. That was followed by the excellent Legion, Blood bound, Renegade, and the monumental Hallowed be thy name, whose after-effects, as Cans explained, concertgoers usually feel the next day, and it’s called “slayer neck”. With no fear of the so-called lumbago, the long-haired crowd started relentlessly spinning and shaking their heads, while a water curtain poured down from the ceiling in front of the drums, and a laser beam from the back painted various band-related motifs on it. A really clever and effective visual touch, one that made us completely forget about the lack of pyro of one kind or another.
During the instrumental Something for the ages, we got to see the new guitarist Pontus Norgren, who took over the lead role in that department after Stefan Elmgren left, since it’s well known that the lanky Dronjak rarely opts for solo excursions, either in the studio or on stage. Norgren brought a few new moves to HammerFall’s music, though on the other hand they’re still strongly tied to Sweden’s best-known fast-fingered shredder Malmsteen, with whom Pontus worked for a long time. After the hits Any means neccesary and Natural high, with which the band promoted its last two albums, shortly before the end we also got the famous Riders on the storm, where an attentive listener was bothered by Cans’s previously mentioned excessive concern for his vocal cords, as the vocalist sang the high part before the solo an octave lower than on the album. The years have clearly taken their toll, as shown by the fact that Cans did the same the day before. In the encore we heard Lore of the arcane, trailblazers, and the legendary Let the hammer fall, whose riffs took us back to the time when Accept and Judas priest ruled the world’s stages, and the show was closed by the first hit from the Crimson thunder record, Hearts on fire.
HammerFall did their job with distinction despite the problems, but it’s still fair to ask how they would have fared after Sabaton if, as the headliners, they hadn’t had a stage twice as big, twice as much time, and some truly original special effects. But that question is beside the point. Far more important is the general takeaway that gigs like this, in our neighborhood and a bit further afield, are still well attended and well received, and that new generations still respond to impulses from harder music much like they did twenty-five years ago, so we don’t have to worry about the future of metal.
author: Tomo Jurca
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
BLOODBOUND:
1. Sweet Dreams
2. Metal Monster
3. Book Of The Dead
4. Take One
5. Nosferatu
SABATON:
1. Introjavel
2. Ghost Division
3. The Art Of War
4. 40:1
5. Cliffs Of Gallipoli
6. Attero Dominatus
7. Price Of A Mile
8. Primo Victoria
9. Metal Machine
10. Outrodevil
HAMMERFALL:
1. Punish And Enslave
2. Crimson Thunder
3. Legion
4. Blood Bound
5. Renegade
6. Hallowed Be My Name
7. The Abyss
8. Last Man Standing
9. Heeding The Call
10. Glory To The Brave
11. Something For The Ages
12. Any Means Necessary
13. Natural High
14. Keep The Flame Burning
15. Between Two Worlds
16. Riders Of The Storm
—encore I.—
17. Lore of the Arcane
18. Trailblazers
19. Let The Hammer Fall
—encore II.—
20. Hearts On Fire
