Pain of Salvation
I was quite curious about these guys beforehand because they have a really good singer and some cool songs. Live however I wasn't particularly interesting. Didn't really feel like the songs were going anywhere and the singer sounded tired. Don't know if he just had a bad day on a long tour or so, but it wasn't as good as I'd hoped for. Ohwell, it was an okay opener I suppose.

Opeth
Sixth time I see them this time. But I have to say that this was the first time that I wasn't excited at all beforehand. I actually didn't make up my mind about going until four days before. Which is usually too late to get tickets for Opeth in Stockholm. This time however there was no problem. I guess there are more people like me that are a bit sceptic about their latest album.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a bad album. I just feel like it would've been much better if it was a traditional Opeth-album. Because in all honesty I think the bands that Åkerfeldt is inspired by makes their stuff much better than Opeth - and thus Opeth should stick to Opeth-music! But I guess it's in Opeths nature to progress always. Which this tour is a perfect example of I suppose. Because they played all songs in the same seventies-styled way, including the old songs. Yeah, that's right no growls, no Death, no heavy parts.
And this is what makes me a bit divided about this show, because on one hand the new songs from Heritage sounded a lot better live than they do on album but on the other hand I didn't like the remakes of the old songs. I mean, what's the point of playing old songs if you're just going to make them sound like they come from the latest album? I hope it's just a one time thing, in that case it's pretty cool show to have been to. I'm totally for bands trying to evolve, even if I'm sad when the result is something I don't like. I mean, what's the point of putting a drum solo in place of the heavy part of a song? Especially when it was a rather boring solo... Hopefully next tour we'll get to hear Damnation with blast beats though!
I actually quite liked that they had put in some acoustic songs in the set. It was slightly too long though, but really nice with a song that wasn't released and all! And as before, I think they should've skipped the remake of the old song. That'd both shortened the acoustic part enough as well as not messing with a good tune!
On the non-musical part of things Åkerfeldt was entertaining as always. And quite daring. Sending his guitar on a crowdsurfing-run before the last song! That's one expensive guitar, so quite cool that he dared to do it (for the second time ever apparently). And I guess that in itself makes up for some of the uncertainties.
So to conclude this gig had it's ups and downs, cool if it was a one time thing but quite slow and dragged out at times. Without a doubt the worst Opeth-gig I've been to, but that still means excellent playing and good music!