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Heart of Steel: Concert
Reviews
Text & Pics by Arto Lehtinen
&
Marko “Hård Rocker” Syrjala
Here we are here again at the mighty, legendary, and prestigious Sweden
Rock festival in southern Sweden for the third time in
a row to enjoy some good old hard rock as well as some more
aggressive thrash metal. For the first time ever in Sweden Rock history, all tickets were sold out
rapidly especially when Sweden's own hard rock heroes EUROPE was
announced as one of main three headliners of the festival. All
18,000 tickets were gone and due to public
demand, the festival organization decided to put an extra 2000
tickets up for sale. It is obvious that the limit of the
festival may have been reached as it is quite impossible to
further increase the capacity or all kinds of various
problems may arise.
Anyway, having a great opportunity to witness bands on the
stage at the Sweden Rock festival is more like a godsend for
several old school metal bangers as most of these booked bands
hardly play elsewhere in Scandinavia. For example, thousands of
Finnish metalheads had arrived to witness the glorious return of
the British heavy metal legends Judas Priest in action, but on
the other hand seeing the legendary UFO outside of Sweden Rock is more or less out of question.
As the band Europe was one of headliners this year, Ian Haugland wasn’t involved in the hosting which was instead taken
care of by Vanessa Warwick and the local Swedish rock promoter
Peter Löfberg. But above all, the gods of the weather had blessed the
rock-ish/metallic weekend event with both a thunderous raining
maelstrom, and on the contrary, an infernal red hot sunshine,
creating such a wonderful atmosphere. Here for another year is
our “brief” article on the Sweden Rock festival. Read and enjoy!!!
Rock On!!!
THURSDAY 10 JUNE
The Haunted
Starting the festival with The Haunted couldn’t be a bad
choice as the Swedish thrashers definitely started the gear with
the maximum full force ahead. Especially since the old original
screamer Peter had rejoined the Haunted, it was damn
interesting to catch him in action as the previous frontman (Marco Aro) had been testified on the stage several times before.
Peter Dolving’s stage appearance differs a lot from Marco's, as
Peter’s way of acting on the stage has more hardcore elements
and mannerisms. He jumped several times on his knees and screamed
his lungs out and was in general moving around throughout the whole
set. The Swedish thrashers did an equal set by consisting of
tracks from each album. Even a couple of new tracks from the
forthcoming studio album, especially the simple, but the catchy
'99' sounded like strong and brutal, which will be causing a
strong reaction in the pit at upcoming shows. But the audience
at 3PM wasn’t that 'alive' yet. The Haunted is in
dangerous form with Peter being back in the ranks, beware!
TNT
 Norwegian band TNT followed next. They recently released
the brilliant new album My Religion.
TNT haven’t toured outside of
Norway much since then which is a shame. The band has also suffered a
bit from the poor playing time, but once they got started it
didn’t
really matter anymore. TNT hit the stage, and when they did
there
was a big burst of in-your-face energy.
They opened with 'Invisible Noise' then went into 'As Far As The
Eye Can See'. Other songs in the set included 'Intuition', 'My
Religion', '10 000 Lovers', 'Downhill Racer', and their first
hit single 'Seven Seas'. The band closed the show with
'Everyone’s A Star' which was a kind of an MTV hit back in the
late eighties. Ronnie LeTekro’s guitar playing was top
notch, and was completely mesmerizing. Temporary bass player Sid Ringsby did his job well with no mistakes. Diesel Dahl’s
drumming was as solid as ever. His outlook is VERY different
from what it used to be some fifteen years ago. Gone is the big hair and
spandex, now he is completely bold with Hells Angels
tattoos on his shoulders... Biggest points must be given to Tony Harnell…he is one hell of a frontman! He really knows how to
work a crowd and his vocals were great. He can still do all
the high notes and in this case,
 those are VERY high ones. The
sound overall was really tight and surprisingly heavy. It
appeared that even people, who usually are not too familiar with
hard rock, really liked them a lot, which is quite unusual. TNT
was one
of the best bands here and Tony Harnell was possibly the best
singer performing at Sweden Rock 2004.
Setlist:
Invisible Noise
As Far as the Eye Can See
She Needs Me
Downhill Racer
Seven Seas
Caught Between The Tigers
Intuition
Listen To Your Heart
Shine on (?)
My Religion
10,000 Religion
Everyone's a Star
Entombed
 The Swedish extreme metal march continued
when Stockholm’s death metal legends, Entombed, unleashed a real
inferno. Frankly, the Sweden stage has always turned out to be an
excellent place for several band to carry out their own set and
for some bizarre reason most of bands playing on the Sweden
stage have more or less sounded damn good and above the size of
the stage isn't any huge making the following of the band for
the crowd much easier. For example, the Sweden stage suited
extremely well to Entombed’s tight gig. Above all, the curiosity
towards the band increased with newly recruited bass player
from Terra Firma, Nico Elgstrand, replacing Jorgen Sandström.
Entombed played a really heavy set by covering their long career
from the first legendary Left Hand Path album till Inferno. If
I had to compare Entombed’s performance to The Haunted, I for
one would however choose The Haunted.
Helloween
 When Helloween came
to the stage, the festival area was totally full of
people. After a short intro band went directly into old classic
“Starlight” which wasn’t a bad choice to open the set. One
tradition which was now seemingly broken is the amount of
Michael Kiske era material performed. Since Andy Deris joined this
band, they’ve never played so much old stuff. And if I'm not
wrong, there never was too many Kai Hansen era songs
on the set list either. Andy Deris appeared to have certain
problems with singing some of the older tunes, but he gave it
his all, and it came out quite well mostly. Especially the really
old stuff from Hansen's days worked out well. New band members
Stefan Schwarzmann (ex Accept, Running Wild, U.D.O.) and young
guitarist Sascha Gerstner did a good job but it must be
said that Sascha certainly doesn’t quite have the same kind of charisma on
stage such as his predecessors. What surprised me was the lack
of new material played. Only one song from the newest album is certainly
not enough. Also, picking up just only one song from the
brilliant THE DARK RIDE album was strange, maybe some more next time?
Still, despite only a lukewarm reception at encore time (Power,
Sun 4 The World), the crowd seemed to enjoy the show,
particularly “Keeper Of The Seven Keys” and “Dr. Stein”. There
was a huge crowd gathering at the front, ranging from 13 year
olds to forty something's, who were really getting into it.
Overall the gig had various songs from different periods to make
it interesting. The band gave it their all, and they had enough
energy, charisma, and talent to make the gig an absolutely good
one, if rather short... (They had to cut off last song “How Many
Tears” because of because of time schedules.)
Setlist:
Starlight
Murderer
Keeper Of The Seven Keys
Future World
Eagle Fly Free
Hey Lord
Forever And One
Open Your Life
Dr. Stein
If I Could Fly
Back Against The Wall
Where The Rain Grows
Power
Sun 4 The World
 
JUDAS PRIEST
Judas Priest was the first headliner booked for Sweden Rock 2004. That was already
celebrated last Autumn in
Stockholm at the Sweden Rock party. Frankly, getting Judas
Priest as the headliner of the first day wasn’t any big
surprise, neither the news as the band got activated after Halford’s return and was immediately catapulted to the mega star
level as the return of Rob Halford A.K.A. “The Metal God” had been
anxiously awaited for 13 years since his bitter departure from
the band in the early 90’s. Finally it happened, it was about
time indeed.
 The immortal and well known riffs of “The Hellion” started
roaring out of speakers, followed by “Electric Eye”. The guitar
duet K.K. Downing and Glen Tipton had taken the well-known head
banging stance whereas Ian Hill, as usual, to stay more in the
background, where his place has been…forever. Rob Halford decided to have a slower method to reach the audience’s
interest as well as attention by being in the left part of the
stage (seen from the audience’s standpoint) and did the whole
“Electric Eye” way up there there and it was entirely impossible to see the
“Metal God”. Finally he realized to take a few steps to the
right that he could be finally witnessed live. The man had
dressed in a heavy metallic insane looking custume, which must
have weighed a hell of a lot. The set contained real metallic
fireworks of the old JP classics, roaring out of the speakers
hammering the audience down one by one. “Metal Gods”, “A Touch Of
Evil”, “Turbo Lover”, owing to Halford’s return to the JP rank
it was quite expected the stuff from “The Ripper” era had been
entirely ignored… It is kinda worthless to compare Halford’s own
gig at the Sweden Rock festival a couple of years back to the JP
gig, but let it go now. As when “Painkiller” was unleashed by
the Halford band, it sounded damn heavy and above all extremely
brutal, but JP’s version of “Painkiller” sounded quite soft and
didn’t reach the same the brutal approach. In general seeing the
classic guitar duet Downing and Tipton doing the immortal Priest
JP riffs and above all, Halford’s return to the band, made those
people that traveled for this gig damn happy hearing
those classic evergreen metal hymns. But Judas Priest’s show left
quite the divided impressions and opinions amongst the festival
visitors. Following the whole gig from a little bit far away
gave quite the lame picture of the band’s current stage
condition as it looked like the British heavy metal legends
weren’t in the best strike, whereas people being in the
frontline claimed Judas Priest were nothing, but great. But hey
PRIEST IS BACK!
1. The Hellion
2. Electric Eye
3. Metal Gods
4. Heading Out To The Highway
5. The Ripper
6. A Touch Of Evil
7. The Sentinel
8. Turbo Lover
9. Victim Of Changes
10. Diamonds And Rust
11. Breaking The Law
12. Beyond The Realms Of Death
13. The Green Manalishi (with the two pronged crown)
14. Painkiller
15. Hell Bent For Leather
16. Living After Midnight
17. United
18. (You Got) Another Thing Coming
Read on
for FRIDAY 11 JUNE
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