Performers: Twilight Force / Accept / Sabaton
Location: Zagreb / Dom Sportova / Croatia
Date: Monday, 03/13/2017
As anyone who knows Sabaton can tell you, every new album means a huge world tour, and if they don’t play here in Slovenia, they’ll definitely hit nearby Zagreb. Considering the band has been one of the most popular European metal acts for a few years now, especially when it comes to live shows, every visit to one of their gigs is a one-of-a-kind experience. The fact that they brought the German metal veterans Accept along for the ride promised an excellent night of music. The crowd outside the halls of Dom Sportova, plus a few buses from a well-known Slovenian concert transport company, also promised an audience that gets involved, which you simply can’t do without.
The evening ran strictly to the published schedule, so at exactly 7 p.m. the Swedish power metallers Twilight Force took the stage. Just like Sabaton, these guys come from Falun, so it’s no surprise their older townsmen took them out on tour, and Joakim also guested as a vocalist on their latest album. The band formed five years ago and has two albums under its belt. If you’re looking for the most clichéd power metal band out there, look no further. The members look like an expedition straight out of Tolkien’s stories (knights, elves, wizards, etc.), the stage backdrop is decked out with castles and dragons, and the music is a mix of influences from bands like Hammerfall, Rhapsody and Dragonforce. Even their TF logo looks strikingly like Hammerfall’s HF logo. The show itself, sadly, wasn’t convincing. In front of a mostly empty hall, which slowly filled up toward the end of their half-hour set, they were done a great disservice by poor sound, which may have been partly down to all that empty space. The instruments were muddy and you could barely hear the bass. Twilight Force did manage to build some interaction with the small crowd, and the show was livened up by the contrast between the clean vocal lines of singer Chrileon and keyboardist Blackwald, who jumped in with rougher vocals and also served as the story’s narrator. Unfortunately, toward the end the singer’s voice started to lose its precision, which left an extra bitter aftertaste. Better luck next time!
After that lukewarm set, there was no doubt we were in for an hour of a proper heavy metal lesson, one that both the opener and the headliner could learn from. Accept have been going, with a few breaks, for a good forty years, and the roots of the band even reach back to the sixties. The real rebirth came in 2009, when guitarist Wolf Hoffmann and bassist Peter Baltes, both members since 1976, met singer Mark Tornillo and, in 2010, put out ‘Blood of the Nations’ with him, which smashed all their previous records. The following albums were just as successful, and a new one is expected this summer. An hour is barely enough for legends like this, but the sturdy Germans squeezed every last second out of it. An ideal mix of eighties hits and the successes of the past few years kept the packed hall on its feet from start to finish. These seasoned, battle-hardened musicians pulled the show off at a high level and with as much energy as ever, despite their years. During all the guitar solos, and there were plenty, Tornillo had fun playing “air guitar,” while Wolf bent his strings like a madman, pulling unbelievable faces. As is typical for them, the amps were cranked to maximum volume, and this time they were even a bit too much for this hall, causing some slight echo, with the bass getting lost somewhere in the crowd and the guitars at times whistling right through our aching ears. But heavy metal isn’t music you listen to quietly, right?
This year marks ten years since I first saw Sabaton, though only toward the end of their set, as the first opening act at the Therion and Grave Digger show at Cvetličarna in Ljubljana. The next time they played here was two years later at Štuk in Maribor, as the opener for the famous Swedish power metallers HammerFall, and they completely overshadowed them, proving beyond a doubt that their time had come. Every new album charting higher, and hundreds of packed-out shows between releases, only confirm their popularity. And since you’ve got to secure your financial future, they’ve cashed in on that popularity big time. Besides the usual merch, they run their own festival every year, a cruise across the Baltic, special one-off shows, and now they’re even getting into the world of mobile apps. Strike while the iron is hot, as the old saying goes, and they’re sticking to it to the letter. The current tour is called “The Last Tour,” but not because they’re saying goodbye, only because of their latest album, “The Last Stand.” At half past nine in the evening the lights went out and two slightly confused soldiers marched onto the stage, the first with a metal detector, the second with an “Achtung, Minen!” sign on his shoulder, to the sound of Sabaton’s cover of the Status Quo hit “In The Army Now.” After a heftier fellow in a Soviet officer’s uniform scolded them, they left the stage, and on top of the drum tank appeared Daniel Sjögren, normally the drummer of the opening band Twilight Force. Sabaton drummer Hannes van Dahl has taken paternity leave, since he and Floor Jansen, the singer of Nightwish, are expecting a baby any day now. The band then exploded, as per usual, into the opener Ghost Division. For this tour Sabaton have come up with a huge video wall hanging behind the drum tank, adding a visual dimension to the audio experience. Then came a surprise already with the next song, Sparta. Spartan warriors in helmets, armed with spears and shields, marched onto the stage, and singer Joakim strode out dressed as King Leonidas. The show naturally raised hopes that similar scenes would play out in the following songs, but sadly, apart from Joakim wearing a Swedish army coat during Carolus Rex, that didn’t happen. Shame! The Last Tour is also the first tour for new rhythm guitarist Tommy Johansson. Of course he got teased by the band, mostly by the singer, who called him a “šupak,” which the crowd chanted back several times during the show. Tommy proved his worth a little later, too. Stagehands wheeled keyboards onto the stage, and Joakim played the opening bars of the Van Halen classic Jump on them. He quickly apologized, saying his skills weren’t up to it, and handed them over to Tommy. Tommy hit back by playing the solo from the aforementioned Jump on the keys, to the huge delight of the hall. An acoustic version of Final Solution followed, with Chris joining the piano on acoustic guitar, Pär on bass and Daniel on a small drum. The sound, unlike for the previous bands, was excellent this time, and the setlist leaned on the last two albums as expected, but it still wasn’t without a few older classics. An especially lovely gesture from the band at the end of the show was the closing credits, in which they thanked, by name, the entire crew that keeps the Sabaton machine running on this tour. After 18 years and more than 1,000 shows in over 50 countries around the world, they proved once again on Monday night that they’re a force to be reckoned with and that their moment is far from over.
author: Sebastijan Videc
photos: Sebastijan Videc
Twilight Force
1. Battle of Arcane Might
2. To the Stars
3. Riders of the Dawn
4. Flight of the Sapphire Dragon
5. Gates of Glory
6. The Power of the Ancient Force
Accept
1. Stampede
2. Stalingrad
3. London Leatherboys
4. Final Journey
5. Princess of the Dawn
6. Fast As a Shark
7. Metal Heart
8. Teutonic Terror
9. Balls to the Wall
Sabaton
In the Army Now (intro)
The March to War (intro)
1. Ghost Division
2. Sparta
3. Blood of Bannockburn
4. Swedish Pagans
5. The Last Stand
6. Carolus Rex
7. Union (Slopes of St. Benedict)
8. The Lost Battalion
9. Far From the Fame
10. The Lion From the North
11. Final Solution (acoustic)
12. Resist And Bite
13. Night Witches
14. Winged Hussars
—
15. Primo Victoria
16. Shiroyama
17. To Hell And Back
