ROYAL HUNT
The festival day opener often gets a scattered crowd, but luckily (and somewhat surprisingly) that was not the case for Royal Hunt, definitely a bigger band than the timetable indicated, which a loyal fan base didn’t fail to prove. This year’s Paradox II: Collision Course has certainly provided a new enthusiasm and excitement for the band, the pinnacle of which being Mark Boals succeeding iconic frontman John West – this was for many the object of most anticipation this fine morning as well. For about 5 minutes. Boals is legendary in his own right, and was by many dubbed the finest singer of the year after the opener ”River of Pain.”
The smiles shone brightly both upon and around the stage, and even if the Danes (read Swedes, Georgian/Russians and Americans) experienced some heavy sound trouble (surprise …) and guitarist Marcus Jidell firmly laid down the vote for Single Most Unlucky Performer, with two strings snapping separately during the same song. Pronounced good humor is the key to Royal Hunt’s general appeal, and with classics like ”Message To God,” ”Tears Of The Sun,” ”The Mission,” ”Cold City Lights,” (with André Andersen being extremely appropriate with the female choir singers) and ”Last Goodbye” complimenting the solid ”The First Rock,” ”It’s Over,” ”Can’t Let Go,” and ”Never Give Up,” one couldn’t help but feel satisfied. Good show. (Eirik P. Krokfjord)
TESLA
It’s been 22 years since the classic debut Mechanical Resonance, but this still only marks Tesla’s second time visiting Sweden. All the while, “Comin’ Atcha Live” from the debut remains the given opener. A bit on the predictable side it may be, but not in a bad way; after all, Def Leppard should never had omitted “Stagefright” as their opener. And Tesla just can’t do wrong. At least not for the first four songs, or how about being hit by “Into The Now,” the fantastic “Hang Tough,” and the heavy stomper “No Way Out” in a row? Exactly – pure magic. This is where the strength of Tesla lies; the rocking up-tempo stuff and the attitude they conjure with it. The other main feature of the group is the slow, mostly acoustic material that unfortunately rears its head mainly in the middle of the set. This puts a serious damper as it halts the momentum from there on. “Love Will Find A Way” and “What You See” especially does not make a good pairing being performed open air in the middle of the day. As it is ”Cowboy Song” and “Edison’s Medicine” brought back the Rock, but a trifle late. Tesla is at the top of their game when they Rock. They should stick to that. (Patrik Gustavsson)
JOE SATRIANI
“What day is this? Three? Two? Who cares, right?” Paying his first visit to Sweden Rock, Joe Satriani made an immediate impact on the ridiculously hot and sunny Rock Stage. Opening with ”I Just Wanna Rock” and ”Overdriver” from this year’s release Professor Satchafunkilus And The Musterion Of Rock (phew) Satch provided great entertainment for the dense concentration of guitar geeks present. No doubt many reviewers would here succumb to golden nuggets like ”shining out as a guitarist among guitarists” or ”string work sublime, radiant like the rays of the sun itself, mmhmm”, but Satriani’s performance this afternoon was something else – the man’s playing is amazing, flamboyant and impeccable, granted, as can be said about bassist Stu Hamm and drummer Jeff Campitelli, but the atmosphere is more this combination between tranquility and intensity.
Marching through gems like ”Satch Boogie”, ”Flying in a Blue Dream”, ”Super Colossal”, ”Always With Me, Always With You”, ”Cool #9”, ”Surfin’ With the Alien” – this one brought a sensation of a rocket taking off – ”Crowd Chant” and ”Summer Song”, the latter two sharing first place in Most Fitting Festival Song, it’s all about good times enjoying great music. It’s not hard at all having a good time at a Satriani gig nor at Sweden Rock in general, and the two combined proved to be a wonderful combination. Hopefully, it will happen again. (Eirik P. Krokfjord)
FASTWAY
Friday afternoon and Fastway played its second gig at Sweden Rock in as many years. Opening up with “Misunderstood” and “All Fired Up!” founder, ex-Motörhead guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke hasn’t changed too much since the days with his former colleagues. Donning a denim shirt complete with a leather vest, the visual presentation is pretty much intact as well as the signature loud and, the opposite too what his pet name suggests, often lazy, bluesy, but inevitably loud guitar tone. The actual guitar work in songs like “Another Day” could hade been at home in early Motörhead. And, there we have the thing with Fastway; despite the quality of the group’s early material and fine performances of Little
Angels/Gun vocalist Toby Jepson and former Mamas Boys bassist John McManus, most present are probably old Motörhead fans who would still prefer for Eddie to let loose and pull out the classic Motörhead riffs instead. (Patrik Gustavsson)
ACE FREHLEY
Tightness, vocal performance, fluid timing … none of these is nailed particularly well by Ace Frehley and his band. But, the KISS army representatives that make up the crowd don’t seem to care too much. After all, Ace is synonoumus with f**k up’s; its part of what makes him Ace. He is not the greatest guitarist to walk the Earth, and he can’t really sing to save his life (but has survived anyway – a guardian angel must’ve watched over him numerous times). The now sober man, decked in sunglasses, remains perhaps the most popular member KISS ever had, bar Paul Stanley.
While his former colleagues choose to remain in makeup and pull out the fireworks, Ace concentrates solely on the songs. For all the above and more, Ace is seen by many to embody Rock ‘N’ Roll. Certainly lots of Rock was unleashed, with Ace focusing in particular on his 1978 album and various materials from his KISS years. Unfortunately “Hard Times” were omitted, but with the likes of “Rip It Out,” “Rocket Ride,” “Strange Ways”, “Snowblind” and “Rock Soldiers” to name a few being let out, suddenly the at times spotty performance does not matter too much. (Patrik Gustavsson)
HANOI ROCKS
If Ace Frehley is synonymous with f**k ups, Hanoi Rocks is most certainly the band who tries the hardest to be. They also provide the world with a stern reminder – feel free to laugh at the one annual EuroVision pirate/glam/flashbang outfit (there’s always one, isn’t there?), but remember that this is in fact the everyday life of some people. Hanoi Rocks probably takes some time every day to stop and remember this, and it is beyond doubt that they enjoy every bit of it. Very much in the festival spirit, hazardously energetic frontman Michael Monroe being all over the place from the first minute, even taking his first stage dive as early as “Highwired”.
Opening with “Hyper Mobile” and this year’s “Street Poetry” from the eponymous album, it once again becomes evident that the whole concept fails miserably when the quality of the music doesn’t match the general outfits – at a gig with Hanoi Rocks, the only thing more redundant than pot is probably Monroe’s pink saxophone. However, the most important thing is that the crowd is having a good time – and the stage crew could probably do with the exercise. Any way you look at it “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is really catchy, Monroe dangling from the light rigs 20 metres up on “Yesterday City” is a funny enough sight to even out Andy McCoy’s incredibly ugly cardboard guitar on “Powertrip” – Hanoi Rocks is what it is, a hell of a spectacle whether you like it or not. (Eirik P. Krokfjord)
SAXON
Saxon is a bit of a mystery in that they have trouble drawing 1,000 people to individual own gigs in the country, yet they perform to rabid 20,000+ people in attendance at Sweden Rock. Legions coming out of hiding, there must be a conspiracy somewhere? Saxon are clever at keeping the crowd active and interested; for a large part, after a powerful and unexpected choice of opener “Attila the Hun”, they balance the set more or less evenly, with every second song being an old chestnut. Thus, they make sure the majority gets to hear their old favourites.
The diehards that are tired and jaded of the same old songs can rejoice in a relatively good amount of newer material; the songs from Saxon’s Solid Ball Of Rock and beyond-era gets a fair shake this way. Thus, the likes of “Witchfinder General”, “Let Me Feel Your Power”, “I Got to Rock” and “Dogs of War” blend in excellent with long since tested standards such as “Motorcycle Man”, “Crusader” and “Heavy Metal Thunder”. Lined up like this, it’s again apparent how impressively even Saxon’s catalogue really is. Biff Byford is the archetype front man as he bursts out praises of Sweden Rock as being the best festival in Europe. Who knows if he’s really honest, but the audience roars back anyway. This is exactly the sort of stuff the Alternative “shoe gazing” scene didn’t realize the fun of: participation between that of an audience and a frontman. Biff Byford is part of a dying breed; stage naturals of his calibre aren’t exactly dime a dozen these days, and when he screws up with the onstage banter, such as introducing “To Hell and Back Again” as being a song off Wheels Of Steel (it was on the follow-up Strong Arm Of The Law), as well as estimating the crowd as being 42,000 in attendance, it only adds to his charm. Saxon was bloody good. Even for being Saxon. (Patrik Gustavsson)
AT THE GATES
I did get a bit anxious when comeback kids At The Gates decided to open the set with their very best song – ”Slaughter Of The Soul”, but that was just because I’d forgotten how much fantastic music these guys actually made. ”Under A Serpent Sun”, ”Terminal Spirit Disease”, ”Suicide Nation”, ”World Of Lies”, ”With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness”, and ”Forever Blind” are all fantastic, and the encores ”Kingdom Gone” and ”Nausea” even managed to top an otherwise incredible set list, with the crowd responding with going completely bonkers. Tomas Lindberg should never turn his cap backwards ever again, though, but luckily the perfect sound and the impeccable performance of Björler/Larsson made the ears work so hard the eyes couldn’t care still. With Adrian Erlandsson showing he’s ready to give his arch enemy and little brother Daniel a good run for the money about being the best skinbeater in the family it was pretty difficult to find anything to complain about. The band more than deserves a place in today’s not overly impressive Melodic Death Metal scene – actually the question is whether the scene deserves to have At The Gates back. (Torgeir P. Krokfjord).
WHITESNAKE
David Coverdale was in a brilliant mood as he greeted what has to be his very most reliable audience. Having played the festival so many times this reviewer’s lost count a long time ago Coverdale certainly knows how to make a few thousand Swedes enjoy themselves, and he certainly made them do just that this evening. “Best Years”, “ A Fool In Love”, and the fantastic “Lay Down Your Love” showed just how good Whitesnake’s latest effort Good To Be Bad is, and the new tunes didn’t in any way lose face when set up alongside ”Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City”, ”Is This Love”, ”Give Me All Your Love”, ”Fool For Your Loving”, and ”Here I Go Again”.
The highlight of the set, though, was a fantastic version of ”Still Of The Night” – and sun in face and beer in hand it was almost possible to ignore the fact (?) that Coverdale most certainly carrying a few mini-Coverdales with him on tape. Doug Aldritch and Reb Beach both did their jobs more than sufficiently, but it is bloody unnecessary for both – as well as drummer Chris Frazier – to play unaccompanied solos. Other than that the backing snakes rattled & rolled impeccably during the entire set, and on the overall Whitesnake more than delivered the goods. (Torgeir P. Krokfjord)
DEF LEPPARD
Earlier at their press conference, Def Leppard singer Joe Elliot showed concerned apprehension of the band being associated with 80’s movements such as NWOBHM and Glam. The irony is, the Def Leppard of 2008 plays minimal of songs post-Adrenalize and apart from three songs off of their latest, and as a whole well received new album, Songs From The Sparkle Lounge, and one track off the covers CD Yeah!, the rest of the group’s recent fifteen years are ignored this night. Which really is a shame, for there would be cool to hear stuff such as “Work it Out”, “Paper Sun” and “Kings of Oblivion” too mention a few. No matter how successful Pyromania and Hysteria were, Def Leppard’s career didn’t start and end there.
There’s certainly more to this great band than these two records and it would be nice to hear them really delve into some of their other works live for a change. However, predictable set list aside, few band’s could hope to match Def Leppard live; the gloss production they often used on studio works may have been off putting for some, but live the Rock edge of the Leppard comes through, whilst the vocals of the entire band work in unison, and it’s a joy to hear. Guitarists Phil Collen and Vivian Campbell tear through “Bad Actress”, a song that hopefully makes it through Def Leppard’s 2008 touring schedule alive; it works even better onstage than on the album, and the obscure choice of “Mirror Mirror (Look Into My Eyes” at least partly make up for the already mentioned predictable set.
Def Leppard have been focusing their live profile on the States for many years and it feels as though they have some time to make up for on this side of the pond. Hopefully, they’ll keep coming back on a more regular basis from now on. (Patrik Gustavsson)
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