Friday 2/3

Souldrainer
So I was a bit late and missed Nocturnal Rites and so Souldrainer was the first band I saw on this festival! Hearing Death Metal with Swedish lyrics is kind of unusual I suppose, but overall I wasn't impressed at all and could only stand two songs... Ahwell!

Tiamat
So one pretty big names from the Swedish scene I guess! I'm not a huge fan of the Dark Rock/Goth genre overall, but even within it I think Tiamat are a bit too slow. But it was still pretty cool to see them. However, their sound was really really bad. It was just base and more base. They have two guitar platers and a keyboard player... but I barely heard anything from them. Only base. And also I must say that Johan Edlund has to be one of the most bored vocalists I've ever seen. And I've seen James LaBrie so... I mean, you can at least try to get some enthusiasm into it? "Are you happy? Because it feels very important to me that you're happy... *sigh*". I mean, come on? If you can't be excited about your own music why should I be bothered?
At least it got a little bit better towards the end of the show, I guess the enthusiastic crowd gave him some energy!

Amon Amarth
Third time I see these Death Metal Vikings! I've never been a big fan of these guys on CD but I do like them live! Always a lot energy coming from these guys! So with the line up this day they were the given highlight! And for me the big question was: Did LG Petrov (Entombed) fly up one day early or not?
So with that in mind, Amon Amarth pulled off their usual show and they had some awesome pyro for this big stage! Was a bit of a slow start especially as the sound was pretty bad in the beginning, but then they picked up pace and towards the end when they played Death In Fire the pyro was just amazing! The set was actually quite a lot of old stuff, Fate of Norns was the album with most songs represented from it I think!
Anyhow, after Death in Fire they went off the stage... but obviously there was going to be an encore. And they chose Twilight of the Thunder God for that one, and they had an awesome intro with a thunderstorm going on and what not. It was really atmospheric! Finally it was time to answer my question: LG or not? Johan Hegg comes out and says they have one more in store, one that's about two brothers... and they end with Guardians of Asgard of course. At first I though there would be no LG because he stayed off the stage until it was his time to sing when he just suddenly jumped out of nowhere and the crowd exploded! Awesome ending to a good show!

Setlist:
War of the Gods
Runes to My Memory
Destroyer of the Universe
Live Without Regrets
The Pursuit of Vikings
For Victory or Death
The Beheading of a King
Slaves of Fear
The Fate of Norns
Where Is Your God?
Under the Northern Star
Free Will Sacrifice
Cry of the Black Birds
Death in Fire
Encore:
Twilight of the Thunder God
Guardians of Asgaard


Saturday 3/3

Hellbound
This is a bit of an all star north of Sweden Metal band I guess! All though they sound kind of like Rob Zombie Light or something. First show ever apparently! But plenty of experience there so! Only had time to see two songs though, but it sounded all right.

Entombed
Seeing LG they day before actually made me really excited to see Entombed again because it was quite some time since last time! And LG was really into it the day before so I was hopeful for this one!
First surprise came with the crowd! The mainstage area was pretty much filled up - which is kind of impressive considering it was the first band of the day on the big stage! I'd say they probably had a bigger crowd than Amon Amarth the night before and they were headlining! LG was surprised as well, he thought everyone would be at pre-parties still!
And as for Entombed they were really full of energy! And I also liked the fact that they really didn't waste any time in between songs. They had like 2-3 seconds of silence and then they just kept going and going! And the set was awesome! And actually we even got a Roky Erickson cover (Night of the Vampire)!
And not only were there many people there... everyone seemed to be really into it as well! They got a pretty big moshpit going and LG even got the people sitting down (the venue is actually a theatre stage so there's a lot of seats in the back) screaming! It was really cool to see all those fists and horns in the air, all the way to the top of the ceiling!
With so little time in between songs you'd think that there wouldn't be much interaction with the crowd.. but LG is actually really good at connecting with the crowd and directing people with his body language pretty much. He's just a lot of fun to watch, as he's just up there having a good time! And then he cracked a couple of morbid jokes just because he could... "Breaking news! Today Whitney Houston has been sober for 22 days!". XD
So yeah, that was a pretty damn good start to the day!

Immortal
Was planning to see Krux after that, but the line to get into the smaller stage was just insanely long so I couldn't be bothered in the end. So the next band for me was the crazy Norwegians once again!
Immortal are always Immortal, and they showed me pretty much exactly what I was expecting from them! LG told us earlier that they had drunk Immortal under the table the night before so he was looking forwards to seeing them fall over from their hangovers! But there was no signs of that really! Abbath was actually talking more than any other time I've seen them... saying random half Swedish gibberish once in a while. XD
I don't really have much more to say about them, good stuff. Immortal, just what you expect to see!

Hail of Bullets
Then it was finally time for Hail of Bullets! They were pretty much the sole reason I went to this festival actually! I don't think they're very famous in Sweden unfortunately, so I think the crowd was a bit sparse for such a great band! Good atmosphere among the ones who were there though!
Super tight stuff and the barely controlled chaos vocals by Martin van Drunen... it hardly gets any better than that! With only two albums out so far the set was a pretty even mixture of those two, and a nice mix of the really slow and heavy stuff with the really fast stuff! I'm really happy with this gig for sure, they really met all my expectations! Hopefully they'll get a bigger crowd for the next time they come to Sweden though!
Great ending to the festival anyhow, and I left with a broken neck. Always a good sign!

Setlist:
Operation Z
Red Wolves of Stalin
Kamikaze
Nachthexen
Gudalcanal
Warsaw Rising
On Choral Shores
General Winter
Tokyo Napalm Holocaust
Advancing Once More
Ordered Eastward