Sabaton, Arenele Romane, 27.01.15

We didn’t get a chance to see the opening band, Roadkill Soda because of a mix between work, bad traffic and people running late, and had we known what was about to happen, we would’ve tried harder to get there in time. That’s what you get for not respecting the opening bands!

We arrived in the middle of AURA‘s moment, but there wouldn’t have been any loss to skip this one altogether. Ok, maybe we would’ve missed some laughs, but we were already in a good enough mood to live without AURA. I am very sorry for the boys in the band, who seem like decent musicians, but the lead singer (uncoincidentally and unoriginally named Aura) has one of the tackiest stage presence I have ever seen, she seems very self unaware and she cannot stop screaming, I guess that’s her idea of entertaining the crowd. When she noticed that people were (understandably) uninterested about her guitar picks, she decided to stick one between her boobs and proudly announce that “I’ll put it between my tits, if you want”. Needless to say the rest of the night was sprinkled with boobs jokes… The music itself is not very great either (Ingeri pe motoare cannot possibly be anymore cheesy) and since the lead singer seems to lack any personality of her own, we were playing “guess the singer” for most of the show. My money were on Doro Pesch and I won when they had another attempt to entertain the audience by making them chant “all we are”. Not even that woke us up, so they left the stage pretending like we were „such a great audience”.

Between AURA and Battle beast, we sadly found out that the Heroes circle, where we had tickets, had been taken apart before the show because of some security issues signalled by Sabaton’s crew. I’m not going to try to guess if Sabaton’s crew was too uptight or if the organisers didn’t learn anything from the hundreds of concerts they put up, but I am going to give the latter the thumbs up for their crisis management. They addressed immediately both problems (the fact that we payed extra and that we were supposed to have space in the front) by giving us the money back very soon and by letting the people in the Heroes circle go in first, so that they can at least get better places. We weren’t there when this happened (the moral of the story is be there on time, kids), but… eh, they did the best they could under the circumstances. We eventually got pretty good spots anyway and we were so hyped and in such a good mood that we honestly couldn’t get upset about it. We were all like “fuck it, let’s drink bear and headbang to Sabaton \w/”. And people say metalheads are aggressive and angry…

Battle Beast were everything I expected them to be: an entertaining band, that doesn’t take itself too seriously, with a lot of singing along and fists in the air. You know, fun! The bonus was a hot drum player. I was very amused that even though the crowd was mostly made up of guys (like it happens at most metal shows), people were more excited about seeing the shirtless dude then they were about seeing the busty lady before. One of my friends’ comment? “It’s because this one actually knows how to sing”. Good point.

Delain was a band I used to like in their Lucidity era, but that completely lost me on the way after that. Despite that, I was expecting a good show from them, as all the reports about their live performances were very positive. Unfortunately they were most boring. They all tried hard and Otto and Merel were fun to watch (especially Merel, she’s so sweet, she completely stole the show for me and when she’s the one person she’s not actually in the band, that’s kind of a problem), but something was lacking. Maybe it was because I find the music pretty boring as well, but it wouldn’t be the first time I watch a band I don’t normally listen to or enjoy and they turn out to be pretty fun live. Charlotte was also disappointing. For all the praises she gets as a singer, she was pretty mediocre, her boob-revealing top was more interesting then her singing, unfortunately. It didn’t help that after AURA we were all in the mood to razz about everything and there were tons of “can’t sing? Don’t worry, you have boobs” jokes. Yes, we are jerks, but no one made fun of Noora from Battle Beast, I wonder why that is?

Sabaton were their regular over-excited, hyped up, energetic and always joking selves. I see a very bright future for Joakim as a stand up comedian, if he ever gets tired of music. I can’t see that happening, though, as they all are very passionate about what they’re doing and you can tell they’re always so happy to be wherever they’re playing and sing whatever they’re singing. That’s their most endearing trait, actually, that you can tell they’re genuine and they are truly positive people. Yes, they do have their “lines” (and I have to say, as naive as that sounds, I kinda thought the thing about getting the goosebumps last time he was here was something special, so I was a bit sad to see he mentioned the goosebumps again), but they have an enthusiasm that it’s impossible to fake.

Of course the audience was smitten. We really REALLY wanted them to play Swedish pagans, even though most of us knew it wasn’t on the setlist, so early into the show, we all started singing the chorus from SP between songs. Joakim was all “do you think this is a democrrrrracy??? nononono, my friends” and we were all “yeah yeah, we know it actually is” :)) So by the end of the show, we were still singing Swedish pagans and when Joakim started teasing us that the song’s not on the setlist, we just started singing louder, with that “no no you don’t get it, we WANT Swedish pagans and you are going to SING it” air. It was a democracy after all 😀

I like that even though Joakim is of course the center of the attention and the most beloved, the rest of the band members are also very memorable and I enjoyed watching each one of them. It was a fantastic night and everyone had a giant smile on their faces from beginning till end (including the band members). Sabaton is the kind of band that always puts me in a good mood and live they’re even better!