Location: Opatija / Ljetna pozornica / Croatia
Date: Friday, 19 August 2022
The question I’m going to open with is a hard one to ask out loud. Is war good for anything? No. Well — almost nothing. Because for Sabaton, the Swedish power metal institution from Falun, the entire history of human warfare has actually delivered a commercial breakthrough and massive success. So at least we got Sabaton out of it. At a time when power metal was losing its grip, this band pulled off something unexpected: they played the most generic version of the genre imaginable and somehow made it work. The road wasn’t easy, though — quite the opposite. The guys cleverly cashed in on the unexplored niche of “war storytelling,” something no one had thought to do before them. And that, it turns out, was the key to everything.
Sabaton, Sweden’s red-hot power metallers! Out with a new album — “The War To End All Wars” (2022, Rockline review) — and on a new tour: “The Tour To End All Tours.” Impressive. We’ve seen them in plenty of places: Ljubljana, Maribor, Tolmin, Zagreb, multiple times in Germany. This time, though, Sabaton showed up in Opatija. Is someone pulling a bad joke? Nope — this one’s for real. A heavy metal concert that has you driving out to Opatija. Not Zagreb, like we’re used to, but Opatija. As part of the annual programme that the local Opatija festival has been putting together for years. And what a date — exactly 38 years after Iron Maiden played Ljubljana for the first time. In all those years of chasing gigs, and in Rockline’s 16-year run, we’d only made it to Opatija once before — for Joe Satriani, who played there in the middle of July 2006. The years fly by, even when everything feels like it happened just yesterday.
The Ljetna pozornica, right on the waterfront in the middle of seaside Opatija, is honestly an idyllic setting for this kind of event — especially one dedicated to heavy metal. It was just past six in the evening, and Opatija was packed with people dressed in black. Sabaton shirts as far as the eye could see. Everything would have been perfect if you didn’t need to park a car somewhere in the middle of all that. The show wasn’t until three hours later, and yet — finding a parking spot under those conditions required a genuine working knowledge of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Chaos. A collision of metalheads and tourists. Priceless and unforgettable. You just had to let go, release the handbrake, and go with it. Everything works out in the end — parking included. Then came the walk along the lovely coastal promenade, rewarded with a beer right at the venue entrance, where two enormous Sabaton-painted semi-trucks stood guard. The crowds poured in, and the clock pushed past eight. The air crackled with energy, making it clear that a proper power metal mass was about to be held.
A few minutes past nine. People packed in like sardines. The venue more or less sold out — at least 5,000 people. A recorded intro kicks in, the temperature starts to climb, the crowd comes alive! Then the storm hits — straight in with the Sabaton classic Ghost Division from the breakthrough album “The Art Of War” (2008). Sabaton, locked and loaded! And of course, a tank on stage, with drummer Hannes Van Dahl and his kit sitting on top of it. In short — brilliant atmosphere right from the opening. Arms in the air from the front to the back of the venue, as far as you could see. That’s the vibe. When you feel that unity. That magic that pulls everything and everyone into one. Music. Heavy metal. Devotion. Extraordinary. Goosebumps, no question. The band radiated incredible energy and pure joy up on that stage. Joakim Broden didn’t forget to fire his bazooka at the end of the opener. Flames engulfed the stage. A massive projection screen decked out with thematic lyrics, combined with smoke curtains and a barrage of detonations shooting fire in every direction, with hyper-bombastic singalong choruses that the crowd belted out in a trance — it all added up to a guaranteed spectacular show. Behind the thick walls surrounding the venue. The Great War of all wars!
The band hasn’t changed much. They’ve honed the doctrine that conquered the world down to a fine edge and turned themselves into a massive machine. They’ve grown. Outgrown everything. They have their own festival, and in recent years Sabaton have been headlining every major European festival going, filling each one to the last corner. The setlist this time was also festival-sized, and the show ran just over an hour and a half in total, including the taped intro and outro. That’s the one and only minus of the whole evening — instead of a recorded Masters Of The World at the end, they could easily have played it live. How big Sabaton have become was further underlined by the fact that the band sold all 500 t-shirts before the show even started. Both merch tables were completely stripped bare. Only the vinyl was left, which makes sense — nobody was willing to shell out a hefty 490 kn for a record. Prices have shot up by 50% or more across the board, but that’s a phenomenon we’ve been seeing at every post-lockdown show, so it doesn’t surprise anyone anymore.
But what a show. And the crowd loved every second of it. If you’re up close to the stage, Sabaton suck you into their world and you don’t resurface until the last note — and that’s the whole point. That’s the core purpose. Broden has polished his frontman charisma to a shine, and his between-song banter had the audience laughing more than once. True to form, he used the pauses between tracks for his signature “meaty” crowd addresses, dishing out a handful of well-worn lines that somehow land every single time. That’s just how it has to be. The likeable joker, who has admittedly added a few extra kilos over the years, even had the nerve to tease the crowd by playing a few notes of Master Of Puppets — right before Resist And Bite.
Sound: very good from start to finish. Even at the back it was loud enough, and the proof was the sheer level of crowd participation — as mentioned, even the people right at the rear were kicking up quite a racket throughout the show. It goes without saying that the band approached everything professionally. Every second of stage time ran on a precisely mapped-out script. The band worked the wide stage expertly, constantly moving out onto the additional riser platforms. And as noted — the amount of pyrotechnics Sabaton brought to this show was more than I can recall from any of their previous gigs. In the final stretch, before crossing the finish line, Sabaton theatrically ripped through part of the AC/DC classic Highway To Hell, which then flowed straight into the track that actually takes the crowd to hell and back (To Hell And Back).
The band delivered a solid, confident performance. A professional military march from Sabaton that’s hard to find fault with — except for one thing: a few more tracks on the setlist would have gone a long way, and the album “Coat Of Arms” in particular got short shrift, which really wasn’t ideal. The crowd simply refused to accept that the band wasn’t coming back out. A good while after the show wrapped up, they were still chanting “Sabaton, Sabaton, Sabaton…” — but the band was nowhere to be seen. The crowd euphoria is genuinely such that it carries the band through their shows, and there are moments when the quintet barely needs to try. At least part of the audience — especially up front — operates in a pure trance, deep in euphoria and frenzy. With their intensity, their abandon, their unmatched obsession, and their sheer heart, the crowd contributed enormously to making this event what it was — and what it was, we can safely say, was exceptional. Spectacular.
Sabaton are riding high. They’ve become a massive operation and there’s no going back from here. New European tour dates are already on the books. For now, the closest they get to Slovenia in May 2023 is when they play Vienna. The Tour To End All Tours — as its name demands — shows no signs of ending anytime soon.
text: Aleš Podbrežnik & Edita Klemen
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1. Sarajevo / Dreadnought / Christmas Truce / Soldier of Heaven (taped intro)
2. Ghost Division
3. Stormtroopers
4. Great War
5. The Red Baron
6. Bismarck
7. The Attack of the Dead Men
8. Soldier of Heaven
9. Steel Commanders
10. Carolus Rex
11. Night Witches
12. Resist and Bite
13. Dreadnought
14. The Last Stand
15. Christmas Truce
—encore—
16. Primo Victoria
17. Swedish Pagans
18. To Hell and Back
19. Dead Soldier’s Waltz (taped outro)
20. Masters of the World (taped outro)
