Megadeth was supposed to be the headliner to close down Copenhell 2014, but at the very last minute they pulled out due to personal tragedy, and a replacement had to be found.
The festival management acted quickly, and got D-A-D to fill the spot – opinions of this ran high, but I for one was not sad to see the change. Megadeth can be a roller-coaster of quality, whereas D-A-D are consistently entertaining, and when they announced this would be a once in a lifetime No Fuel Left For The Pilgrims anniversary show, the deal was sealed.

“Who would have thought that 25 years ago, we wrote songs for this festival?”
- Jesper Binzer (vocals/guitar)

Considering the last minute assembly of this show, and the fact that D-A-D had played another show this day already in a completely different part of the country, this hard rocking band had managed to put together a visually impressive show for the Copenhell crowd, complete with a weird drumkit, bent stage-speaker racks with lights inside (photos will explain this better than words can) and a whole lot of pyrotechnics which kept us warm in the night.
The first part of the set may not have been surprising as the band had already earlier on announced that it would consist of the No Fuel... album played in its entirety from back to front, so as to end with the classic track Sleeping My Day Away, but it was impressive that D-A-D could get into the routine of playing these 25 year old songs as if they had not done anything else in all that time. Fair enough, several of the songs have frequented D-A-D’s live shows ever since, but certainly not all of them!
There was a second, shorter set after this which consisted of a few cuts from around the bands long career, and the whole thing was rounded off with an encore in It’s After Dark, this time played with a nice double meaning as it literally was after dark – the morning sun had begun to lighten the sky when the song was played!

“This next one reminds me that I had a sex-life once, but I have to think all the way back to the 80ies!”
- Jesper Binzer (vocals/guitar)

You couldn’t tell by the performance that the band was also celebrating their 30th anniversary on stage and that they had already played a concert earlier in the day – every man was just as lively as we have come to expect from earlier experiences, and they strutted around the stage and let one pose relieve the last one, putting to shame all of the voices that had raised concern about having them headline a metal festival.
If a point of critique should be raised, it could be that the band held too much to their safe cards, doing highly entertaining tricks for sure, but tricks we have seen them do so many times before. The most inventive and interesting thing, and a thing we have only seen once before, was Laust Sonne’s drum-solo, which he played on a secondary drum kit which had been wheeled to the front of the stage and was lit on fire at the end of the solo!

Whether people found them too soft for the situation or not, every single participant of Copenhell seemed to be present for this concert, and you couldn’t tell from the energy of the crowd that there were any nay-sayers among us.
Every song had a good sing-along going, where in the larger hits such as the aforementioned Sleeping My Day Away we got to ride solo for large parts of the song, and people headbanged, danced and had a generally good time. That the clock was around half past two in the morning when D-A-D finished their set after a final encore couldn’t be felt on the still party-hungry festival goers. The concert was over though, as was the festival for this year, and it was time to say good-bye. As we looked out over the harbour, it was a beautiful sight.
D-A-D might not rank amongst my favourite concerts of the festival, but their routine, professionalism and good humour proved beyond a doubt that they belonged in this crowd just as much as they belong anywhere else. Nicely done!

Setlist:

Ill Will
Wild Talk
Siamese Twin
Overmuch
Lords Of The Atlas
Girl Nation
True Believer
ZCMI
Rim Of Hell
Point Of View
Jihad
Sleeping My Day Away
Reconstrucdead
Monster Philosophy
I Want What She’s Got
Solo (Sonne)
Bad Craziness
It’s After Dark