HammerFall (support: Visions Of Atlantis)
Sunday, 14 September 2025
Lignano Sabbiadoro / Arena Alpe Adria / Italy
This year’s Lignano Sunset Festival hosted Swedish power metal kings HammerFall, with the band chosen to warm up everyone in the room that evening at the Italian seaside resort of Lignano Sabbiadoro and the Arena Alpe Adria being Visions Of Atlantis — the Austrian pirate metal outfit we also caught in Ljubljana on 9 July 2025, when they played CUK Kino Šiški supporting Gloryhammer!
HammerFall released their latest — and still current — album last year: their thirteenth overall, “Avenge The Fallen” (RockLine review). Given that, after their February 2020 show at the Orpheum Theater in Graz not a single headlining concert had come anywhere near Slovenia since, it was well overdue to check in on this — and we can call them nothing less than legendary — power metal outfit, one that a whole wave of slightly younger bands looked up to and modeled themselves on, bands that (Sabaton, Powerwolf) have since become massively commercially successful and long ago outgrown their own role models.
The Arena Alpe Adria is a wonderfully charming venue. It holds maybe up to 2,500 people, seating included. We keep coming back, and always with great pleasure. 31 July we were here for Extreme, 19 August last year for Amon Amarth. The turnout this time was, once again, a bit thin. In fact there were even fewer people than for Extreme. The stands were completely empty, with maybe 600 people on the floor at most. But 600 fired-up ones!
Visions Of Atlantis hit the stage at half past eight in the evening. A band whose roots stretch back deep into the nineties, they made it in the end through sheer relentless hard work and belief in what they do. Proof of that is the band’s unstoppable creative output — four studio albums in the run from 2018 to today — and above all, with “Pirates” and “Pirates II – Armada” they finally put everything in its rightful place! They’ve transformed into a symphonic power pirate metal quintet with male and female vocals, a polished stage wardrobe, and theatrical set pieces — things that, for the younger generation of metalheads, matter even more than fantasy worlds and pirate lore (as found on the recent studio releases). Clementine Delauney — the French vocalist — and Italian singer Michele Guaitoli are a perfect match. The band worked the large stage with skill and ceremony, the whole thing playing out like the deck of a pirate ship and radiating great energy all around. Guaitoli, who hails from Gorizia, fired the crowd up several more times by addressing them in Italian. The band got a generous slot and in one hour played eleven tracks, with Visions Of Atlantis sticking almost exclusively to material from the last two albums. From the opening Master The Hurricane through the haunting Monsters to the grand finale via Melancholy Angel and Armada, the band held the audience throughout with a stellar stage performance, topped off by excellent sound. One curious note: Visions Of Atlantis took an unusually long time to take their leave of the stage. So long, in fact, that they could have squeezed in another track.
HammerFall delivered something of a career-spanning set in an hour and a half, though an old-school metalhead like yours truly would have liked a few more older classics — preferably some overlooked gems from the first four or five albums. But anyway. The wide stage, the backdrop featuring a castle housing the famous Hector — the mascot that has accompanied the band since the very beginning of their career. They’re all here. Joachim Cans on vocals, guitarist Oscar Dronjak, bassist Fredrik Larsson, the ace guitarist Pontus Norgren — who at one point earned his keep as Yngwie Malmsteen’s guitar tech — and last but not least, genuine drumming beast David Wallin, barely visible behind his fortress of drums.
Cans proved he’s holding up very well vocally and maintaining the stature of one of the sharpest frontmen around. He wins the crowd over instantly. Handles them with great skill — including in the between-song breaks, which he fills with digestible banter delivered with a well-developed sense of humor. Oscar is Oscar. Charisma without equal. A true showman, and HammerFall without him is simply unimaginable. The man who started it all. Pontus has to be in this band — the range of his guitar playing that saturates every HammerFall concert is a vital thing. Larsson on five-string bass with a wall of thundering lines, and finally the beastly Wallin, who was quietly holding the entire time structure together from back there behind the kit! HammerFall remain a finely-tuned machine, a byword for great and immaculately prepared live shows. The setlist held no particular surprises, except for the “Chapter V” instrumental classic Fury of the Wild, which the band brought back into the repertoire for the first time in over ten years. Among the ‘newer’ ones, Any Means Necessary still works fantastically live! And the classics stay classics — with Glory to the Brave front and centre, one of the most beautiful ballads in the entire metal universe. Could have done with a few more of those tonight!
The first eighty minutes flew by all too fast and the band left the stage. Closing the main set with the “Built To Last” banger (We Make) Sweden Rock — an interesting and unexpected choice. You’d expect an older track in that slot. But as said. Cans and company had the crowd brilliantly fired up — a crowd full of older, already greying heads who were living every moment of it with real intensity, nostalgia side included (where has that Graz show gone — 2 February 2001 on the “Renegade” tour?). There were genuine moments during the concert when absolutely everyone was singing. And everyone had their hands in the air. From the first to the last row on the floor, which this time was a little over half full. The energy was excellent in every respect.
The band came back for the encore. After the new Hail To The King — genuinely one of the strongest moments on “Avenge The Fallen” — came, as expected, the “Crimson Thunder” banger Hearts On Fire, with one of the most perfectly crafted chorus hooks the band has ever pulled off, drawing you in with irresistible, hypnotic force.
A blast! Powerful, tight, polished, and still fully committed even after 30-plus years. All that routine and road mileage, yet the fire doesn’t let up, the hammer keeps swinging! It was great to catch the band live again after five and a half years, and to relive the era when, at the turn of the millennium, it was on HammerFall’s wings that power metal stepped into the mainstream spotlight and in doing so stirred renewed interest in classic heavy metal — which had been slowly picking itself back up after the surge of extreme metal through the nineties. The quintet remains in very, very good live shape.
text: Edita Klemen & Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik & Edita Klemen
Visions Of Atlantis – setlist:
1. Master the Hurricane
2. Monsters
3. Heroes of the Dawn
4. Clocks
5. Legion of the Seas
6. Tonight I’m Alive
7. Collide
8. Hellfire
9. Pirates Will Return
10. Melancholy Angel
11. Armada
HammerFall – setlist:
1. Avenge the Fallen
2. Heeding the Call
3. Any Means Necessary
4. Hammer of Dawn
5. Freedom
6. Renegade
7. Hammer High
8. Last Man Standing
9. Fury of the Wild
10. Chapter V: The Medley
11. Let the Hammer Fall
12. Glory to the Brave
13. The End Justifies
14. (We Make) Sweden Rock
—encore—
15. Hail to the King
16. Hearts on Fire
