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Events and Reports - Sweden Rock Festival 2008 - Day 1 (Stuart) - Korpiklaani, Sabaton, Satyricon
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
This was my fifth consecutive year of packing my bags and heading out on the road to sunny southern Sweden to rock out watching what is always one of the most varied line-ups on the European festival season. It's always a diverse bunch of bands with Glam, AOR and Classic Rock mixing it with Power, Death, Black and just about any other genre of metal that you care to mention.
Admittedly the line-up of this year's festival was probably the weakest of the five years I've been there. With some lazy choices (Def Leppard and Whitesnake who both headlined two years back), some worryingly main stream announcements (Nu-metal in the form of The Disturbed, and Emo-Prog as played by Coheed and Cambria) not to mention a slightly weak closing act in Poison, who are a decent band but surely not strong enough to close the festival?
The slightly disappointing line-up lead to us leaving Scotland with a travelling party consisting of just three hardy souls. Craig, Andy Nutt and myself set out on the long and arduous journey from Glasgow to the Sweden campsite via *deep breath* A train to Prestwick Airport, the bar in Prestwick Airport, The O'Neil's bar in London Stansted, The floor of Stansted airport (nine hours between connecting flights sucks), Copenhagen Airport, A two hour train journey to Solvesburg in Sweden, The nearest Systemboalget to purchase copious amounts of much needed alcohol and a finally a Sweden Rock Festival bus.
During our rather long wait at Stansted we met The Hobbit (or Andy, or Roo if you prefer) a friend of a friend who would be joining us for the trip. Having never met him before we were pleased to find out that he was a thoroughly sound chap who we helped ease through the pain of breaking his Sweden Rock virginity.
After choosing a suitable camping spot, setting up the tents, cranking up the stereo and cracking open the beers we were joined by former RevelationZ writers Nina and Mads who brought with them Tommy and Bo. Steen and Michael elected to miss the first night of partying and join us the next day, the big girls! We also hooked up with Duffy and Steve, a couple of Welshmen we had befriended on a previous trip.
Much drinking was done over the course of the afternoon, evening, night and into the following morning until I crashed out around 3.am. I'm sure that lots of interesting and crazy things happened during this time but for some strange reason I can't quite recall them at all.
Wednesday
Needless to say I woke up with a stinging hangover the next morning, which was not helped one bit by the blazing sunshine and stifling heat. I somehow made it through to the afternoon when we were joined by Steen and Michael, who looked just a little fresher than the rest of us. At some point in the afternoon the legendry Dennis the Menace joined the party and all was right with the world. Soon after a couple of beers, three o'clock rolled around and it was time to go do that other traditional festival pastime: go see some bands!
First band on the list were Faith who I knew absolutely nothing about They turned out to be an entirely decent if slightly one dimensional Doom/Trad Metal band who's set was occasionally sparked to life with some folky instrumental passages.
Next up we headed over to the Sweden Stage to watch one of the highlights of the festival Korpiklaani. Having seen the crazy Finns before I knew we were in for a good show and I'm pleased to report that they didn't disappoint. The band played in a fit to burst Gibson tent last year and the organisers had seen fit to allow them to loose their brand of Folk Metal upon a bigger audience in the open air. It was clearly the right decision as both the band and audience were dancing like mad men from the first note to the very last. They raced through some of their most well known songs such as "Journey Man", "Hunting Song" and personal favourite "Korpiklaani" plus a selection of tracks from their newest release Korven Kuningas.
They also managed to produce one of the best moments of the entire week when they unleashed "Happy Little Boozer". All of a sudden a conga line formed in the pit and started snaking its way through the crowd, it ended up with 200+ people conga-ing their merry way round the front of the audience then disintegrating into a mass jig as the song reached its climax. Fantastic stuff and one of the most well organised pits I've even experienced!
The band ended their set with a riotous rendition of "Beer Beer", and after a performance like that they should get a guaranteed slot every year. I don't think anyone who watched them that day would complain.
Astral Doors were about to start on the Zeppelin Stage but me and Andy Nutt headed back to the campsite for more suntan lotion and perhaps even a quick beer. We figured it was better to be safe than sorry on both counts. Although it turns out that quaffing a beer that has been sitting in a sweltering tent all day in about ten minutes is not a great idea.
We got back just in time to see The 'Doors play their rather Black Sabbath inspired "Of The Son And The Father". I can only hope that lead singer Nils Johansson head me screaming "Sing me a song you're a singer" over the rather Heaven and Hell sounding bass line as he even added in the "There's a big black shape" section that Dio includeds in his live renditions of that song. We eventually located Craig in the crowd and made our way in to watch the rest of the set. It was a solid performance filled with some highly polished Heavy Metal with the closing tracks "Evil Is Forever" and "Black Rain" being particularly impressive.
Now as Andy Nutt is rather partial to the works of a Mr Angus Young he demanded we check out AC/DC revivalists and current media darlings Airborne who started as soon as Astral Doors finished. Not caring much for dirty Rock 'n' Roll I attempted to reason with him but he wasn't having any of it. I ended up sprawled on the grass on the hill as the band attempted to summon the spirit of Bon Scott for an hour. Can't say I remember much about their music apart from every song following the exact same formula (well AC/DC were never the most experimental of bands I suppose) and the seemingly endless extending of instrumental sections in every single song.
Mind you, the front man Joel O'Keeffe did give a good account of himself, climbing up the rigging at the side of the stage to rock out high above the crowd's heads before clambering onto the speaker stack and leaping quite a few feet back down to the stage. Impressive showmanship, shame about the music.
More food and beer back at the tent was then the order of the evening as we took the weight off our feet for a while before heading back out into the battlefield for Sweden's own Sabaton. The band truly got a hero's reception as they stormed their way through a powerhouse performance.
Opening with "Ghost Division" a track from their new release The Art Of War the band were clearly enjoying themselves as lead singer Joakim was unable to suppress a massive grin while he patrolled the stage surveying the masses that turned up to see them. Although the set lent heavily on the new album it did not detract from the experience at all as most of the new songs were received like old favourites. A special mention must go to "The Price of a Mile" with its stirring chorus and title track "Art of War" for bringing some pyro to the party.
Old school Sabaton fans did not walk away disappointed as the band still found room in their set for "Attero Dominatus", "A Light In The Black", an epic rendition of "Rise of Evil" plus a clutch of songs off their debut including "Into The Fire", "Panzer Battalion" and the pogo-inducing smash "Primo Victoria". This is probably Sabaton's most well known song and got one of the biggest reactions of the festival as God knows how many thousands of people jumped as one to the D-Day inspired anthem.
The set closed with a clever medley of "Metal Machine" and "Metal Crûe" and the band can walk away safe in the knowledge that they successfully rallied the troops and gained some eager new recruits.
Despite being knackered after Sabaton we dragged ourselves across to watch a bit of Swedish retro outfit Graveyard. On our way over to the Gibson Stage we bumped into Steen who had got himself a massive bag of popcorn. We decided he needed a bit of help with it and tucked in. Graveyard seemed fairly decent but their laid-back Sabbath esque grooves were not quite what we were searching for at that moment so we headed back to the tent for yet another quick beer. Thankfully by this time the sun had gone down and the beers were much cooler.
There was then a breaking of the fellowship over which band to round off the day with. Craig and Andy Nutt went off to see the Vivian Campbell-less Sweet Savage and I chose to see Satyricon back at the Sweden Stage. I was a bit apprehensive at this decision as I had seen Satyricon a couple of yeas ago in Glasgow and they were not particularly engaging on that occasion. Thankfully this time they were far better and made a perfectly dark end to the day.
The sound on the Sweden stage which had been a little bass heavy during the day was by now utterly perfect allowing you to hear all the intricacies of Satyr and co's earlier works but also giving them the power to be crushingly heavy on the newer, more direct material.
The band played a good mix of songs but mostly from Nemesis's Divina onwards. Sadly the earlier albums were given the short shrift but that seems to have been a case with the band for a while. Satyr appears to want to get away from conventional Black Metal styling's himself both musically and visually these days as he looks more 80's Goth than corpse painted warrior with his short hair and white make-up.
The band really did turn in an excellent set which provided a perfect atmosphere to the ever cooling Scandinavian night. There is really something to be said for watching Black Metal at midnight in the region that it originated from. But anyway, romantic notions aside, tracks like "K.I.N.G" and "The Pentagram Burns" which on record seem slightly plain and unadventurous really come to life in the live setting as the musicians seemed determined to put in an excellent performance. The fact that it was slightly slick by BM's rough and ready standards didn't matter at all and around 1am when the sky was at its darkest, the night was brought to a close with a grand version of their signature song "Mother North".
| Click pictures for a bigger version.
Airbourne
Airbourne
Sabaton
Sabaton
Sabaton
Sabaton
The audience at Sabaton
Sabaton
Sabaton
Sabaton
Sabaton
All pictures taken by Steen | Written by Stuart
Sunday, July 20, 2008 |
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