Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Urban Bolta
Location: Sölvesborg / Sweden
Concert date: 07.06.2011
Attendance: 10000
Ticket price: 270€ (4-day ticket)
The year flew by, and the start of June once again kicked off the busy summer festival season with Sweden Rock Festival (SRF from here on), one of the most revered festival events on the Old Continent. This year SRF celebrated its twentieth anniversary. From humble beginnings with a few thousand visitors in 1992, the festival has grown into a real Mecca for pilgrims from all over the world, because it constantly serves up a hugely interesting lineup of bands that are hard to catch anywhere else. Anyone remember the last time bands like Triumph, Poison, Blue Öyster Cult, Helix, Cactus and Styx played in Europe? The regulars of this prestigious event know the answer to that one very well.
The days before departure were packed with phone calls to coordinate everything and last-minute preparations for the roughly 1800-kilometer trip. The excitement and tension kept building until the last hour before we left, when the long-awaited Monday evening finally arrived. The seven of us, gathered from all corners of Slovenia, rolled through Stuttgart, where we spent a lovely sunny day and had another run-in with Iron Maiden, before our ever-handy Garmin sent us off on an all-night drive toward Sölvesborg, a small town about two hours from Malmö in the far south of Sweden. Across endless German autobahns and breathtaking Danish bridges, we finally made it to the scene of the crime on Wednesday afternoon, set up at our usual spot, said hi to our equally usual neighbors, the Belgians, and headed off toward the first concert happenings.
For the fifth year running, SRF has offered visitors a warm-up day with somewhat less illustrious names than the main three days of the festival. This year the first day was mostly for fans of Swedish hard rock. The set by Americans Rhino Bucket was surely interesting too, but sadly we missed it because of our late arrival, so my first concert stop went by the name of Crashdïet.
CRASHDÏET (Sweden stage)
Crashdïet are one of the many bands of the Swedish (and wider Scandinavian) hard rock boom of the past decade. They’re known for their extreme sleaze look and, in the end, for the tragic event when frontman Dave Lepard took his own life at just 25, only a few months after the release of their debut “Rest in Sleaze” (2005).
As typical representatives of the glam rock school, Crashdïet bank heavily on the show itself, and this time too they went all over the stage and soared into the sky on the wings of frontman Simon Cruz. The nicely packed front of mostly young, inexperienced fans literally ate out of their heroes’ hands, especially during the band’s best-known tracks, like Riot in Everyone with its excellent chorus, or the almost AOR-style ballad It’s a Miracle. These guys go for punchy hard rock with sharp guitar lines and highly melodic hooks, with both guitarists usually joining the lead vocals in the chorus. It was an energetic performance that even sleaze masters Pretty Boy Floyd wouldn’t have been ashamed of, and over the hour on stage it forged a firm bond between band and crowd, which is no surprise given how popular these youngsters are on home turf. The strutting reached its peak at the end of the set, when guitarist Martin Sweet used Cruz’s motorbike to smash his guitar to smithereens. Then Crashdïet said goodbye with the title track of their latest album, “Generation Wild” (2010), leaving the fiery female fans below the stage chanting their name into the void for a long while.
What followed was the always fun business of browsing the countless stalls, hunting for missing albums and soaking up the rest of the goings-on around the festival, before a heavy downpour forced us to hole up in the tent, which left the question of whether we’d see the headliners of the warm-up day hanging in the air for a long time.
HARDCORE SUPERSTAR (Sweden stage)
Despite their more recognizable name and longer time on the scene, another ace of the home-grown hard rock crowd with an incredibly off-putting name (Hardcore Superstar?!?) didn’t manage to pull as big a crowd in front of the stage as the earlier acts, Five Johnson Band and Crashdïet, thanks to the sudden turn in the weather. Still, that didn’t spoil the great mood you could feel in the air.
It’s Hardcore Superstar who deserve credit for a kind of “boom” in the Swedish hard rock underground over the past decade, and they can also boast of having opened for Mötley Crüe on their UK tour. They’re currently in the middle of a grueling run of shows in support of their latest album “Split Your Lip” (2010), in my opinion the best release of their career. The Swedes came across as a well-oiled unit that knows exactly how to own a big stage. Constant interaction with the crowd, well-rehearsed gestures and running around the stage were just pieces of the mosaic that Hardcore Superstar put together over the course of the show. They tailored the setlist to showcasing the new record, which was heavily represented especially in the closing stretch with Sadistic Girls, Bully, Split Your Lip and Last Call for Alcohol. Compared to Crashdïet, the “Superstars'” style is less melodic and the guitar lines more metallic, so the concert feels more exciting and intense. The dividing line when it comes to digesting the band is the distinctive vocal tone of frontman Joakim Berg – yet another heartbreaker in the lineup – whose voice comes from deep in his throat, and who doesn’t worry about all the talk of how quickly that sort of singing wears out the vocal cords. The highlight of the show was the acoustic version of Here Comes That Sick Bitch, where only guitarist Vic Zino and Berg stayed on stage, and before the closing banger Moonshine they delivered one more emotional ballad, of which there was truly no shortage that day. With a confident performance, Hardcore Superstar proved once again that their name isn’t sung in hard rock circles in vain.
After the show, worn out from two grueling days on the road, we quickly slipped into our sleeping bags and tried to gather as much new strength as possible for the days ahead. Bursting with excitement and hoping for friendly weather, we naturally dozed off in no time…
Photos: Urban Bolta, Anna Winberg (Crashdïet), Maria Johansson (Hardcore Superstar)
Setlist
15:30 — 16:10 SEVENTRIBE (Zeppelin) 16:15 — 17:15 RHINO BUCKET (Sweden) 17:15 — 18:00 The DEAD AND LIVING (Rockklassiker) 17:15 — 18:15 MASON RUFFNER (Zeppelin) 18:30 — 19:30 CRASHDIET (Sweden) 19:30 — 20:00 BOB LOG III (Rockklassiker) 19:45 — 20:45 BLACK VEIL BRIDGES (Zeppelin) 21:00 — 22:15 FIVE HORSE JOHNSON (Sweden) 22:30 — 23:00 ROFFE WIKSTRÖM (Rockklassiker) 22:30 — 23:45 NECRONAUT (Zeppelin) 24:00 — 02:00 HARDCORE SUPERSTAR (Sweden) CRASHDIET setlist: 1. Breakin’ the Chainz 2. Down With the Dust 3. So Alive 4. Riot in Everyone 5. Native Nature 6. Queen Obscene / 69 Shots 7. It’s a Miracle 8. Chemical 9. In the Raw ——————- 10. Armageddon 11. Rebel 12. Generation Wild HARDCORE SUPERSTAR setlist: 1. Kick On The Upperclass 2. Bag On Your Head 3. Last Forever 4. She’s Offbeat 5. We Don’t Celebrate Sundays 6. Hateful 7. Wild Boys 8. My Good Reputation 9. Cry Your Eyes Out 10. Simple Man 11. Blood On Me 12. Standin’ On The Verge ——————— 13. Sadistic Girls 14. Split Your Lip 15. Bully 16. Guestlist 17. Last Call for Alcohol 18. Here Comes That Sick Bitch 19. Moonshine
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