This is another weekend of late night London at it's best. We got into Koko at about 7.15 and had missed most of Hell's support set! Now I know it didn't matter much as Hell sound and look exactly as you imagine them to! Yup they really do look like tellytubbies on acid playing Steps tunes.
Oh sorry scratch that. HELL look and sound like a biblically obsessed doom metal band that love a bit of Iron Maiden and Angelwitch. The first song we saw was To the Devil and the singer (who had on a crown of thorns with a Madonna mic attached to it)was doing his best devil calling routine over the old school metal hystrionics of the band who all looked like warmed up corpses.
They then did what sounded like Macbeth Satan to my ears that seemed to fuse Shakespeare's play to biblical doom mongering and thrashing guitars of hell. It was then time for some Toil and Trouble as the satanic spells were cast towards us hoping to ensure we wouldn't remember how similar this riff was to several Iron Maiden tunes.
They closed what was apparently their only London appearence of 2011 with there reworking of Our Father Who Art In Heaven and lyrically it stuck pretty close to the original with only the odd Satanic reference thrown in for good measure as they riffed all over the place and got Koko going nicely. Then after much Unsatanic thanking of the audience they went back to the bowels of Hell or wherever it is in Derbyshire they come from! Oh and in case there are any NWOBHM obssessives out there, yes they are the same Hell that formed in 1982 but of course they have a new singer as the original one is now residing in Hell. Ahem.
Almost as soon as Hell left the stage the "Ton Army" (thanks Jo for that one) started to chant "Sabaton" repeatedly and also started singing some of there songs. To say this sold out crowd was up for it was an understatement, just don't go and see them in Newcastle where the ton army would probably clash with the toon army and it could get messy. Looking around it seemed like we had come to a gig where over 75% of the audience play World of Warcraft or similar games and had come out of their lairs to see this the penultimate show on SABATON'S World War Tour that has been on the road since August 2010, during which time they have played well over 200 shows.
From the moment the bands intro music of Europe's 'The Final Countdown' started, the place went mental with everyone singing along before the March To War came on as Sabaton came on stage and launched into Ghost Division.
Damn, they are one road tightened 6 piece Battle Metal band. Broden had on his trademark metal vest and shades and after the first song thanked us all for coming and for making this the final leg of the tour a total sell out. We then went off to battle once more in Primo Victoria with as ever the lyrics telling the story of the battle its' title suggests.
Broden announced that as it was almost the end of the tour they would be letting the audience choose most of the set! Yes they are confident enough to be able to play almost everything on their 4 albums and then gave us the odds of survival as 40:1 in an endless, gory battle for survival. I'm not sure if they were the odds at the Cliffs of Gallipolli but that brilliant song was next and got the place going mental.
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No matter how heavy the subject matter or the tunes are the band's inbetween song banter is always a lot of fun and the cheesy keyboards that run throughout lighten the load a fair bit too. What I really love, though, is when 5 of the 6 of them are singing in unison as they did for most of Screaming Eagles and indeed most of the set.
They started deciding songs by voting by audience cheer which meant we got Coat Of Arms next, and that was followed by a Wolf Pack that saw a particularly large mosh pit form.
They played Talvisota for the first time ever in the UK and it sounded mighty good to me before we got to one of those songs with a chilling tale to tell about The Price of A Mile and how many men will get slaughtered of an advance of just a mile. But then the Panzerkampf were readying their advance into the Russian wastelands ready for slaughter and to get slaughtered.
Uprising and White Death both kept up the crushing riffs and almost choral vocals as they ran all over the stage and up the ramps to where Mullback was bashing the hell out of his massive drum kit at one end of the riser and MYHR was bringing the cheese on the keyboards at the other end.
Back In Control is about what happens once you repel the invading hoards from your lands and are free once more, which seemed to be timed perfectly as the Iraqis find themselves in something like that situation right now. They then did a song about their home lands, Swedish Pagans, that they all seemed to be smiling and laughing through no matter how serious the lyrics are. Still it was time for the Panzer Battalions to get what was coming to them.
It may well be that the people who defeated the Panzer Battalion were awarded the Purple Heart but we were only getting to hear that for the first time in the UK as they didn't know Union which had repeatedly been requested from the audience! They then did the brilliant title tune to Attero Dominatus and finished the set with the Fall Of The Wall and left to huge applause and the Ton army chanting fit to deafen.
They came back and said they were singing songs about Broden's dick but before that he spotted someone wearing the same metal top as him and asked if it was in good condition before swapping his sweat and tour ravaged one for the fan's top!! They then launched into Metal Ripper before finishing off with a Metal Machine that segued into Metal Crue which brought the house down on a great show by a great metal band.
I only wish someone had requested YMCA or Jingle Bells as they apparently did at the Antwerp show. That would have provided the most hilarious icing on the cake!
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