Disneyland After Dark

Valbyparken, Copenhagen - 2011

Text: Tobias Nilsson Photo: Lunah Lauridsen

It’s summer, it’s sunny, and most importantly of all, it’s time to dust the D-A-D crew off and throw them into a Danish park in front of a host of drunken people!
This time the park was Valbyparken, the event was called En Dejlig Aften (trans. A Delightful Evening), and part of the crowd was made up of us, your trusted Metalmoments staff.

D-A-D was not surprisingly headlining the evening, as it should be, so the audience had both had ample time to devour a self-controlled amount of a liquid of their own choice, and warm their vocal-chords up to the ever popular pop-rock artist Kim Larsen. Now it’s up to you to guess what happened when Denmark’s biggest and most popular rock band took the stage, and opened up with the fast-paced live favourite Evil Twin…
You got it? Sure you do, people went crazy with joy of course!
Straight from the start some people were dancing, others were headbanging, others still simply raised their metal-horns in the air, and one and all were singing and shouting along at the top of their lungs.
The band quickly went from one song to the other, and the next one up was the even more classic Bad Craziness which of course did not dampen the already high spirit of the audience. This fast paced change of song style was kept up for most of the gig, as the band was leaving more time to solo’s and jamming sessions in the middle of the songs than they did for chatting between them. Not that this was completely kept out either, for one thing Jesper Binzer’s “phone-call through the microphone” was still included in the set, even though it was kept pretty short this evening.

The big new thing in the performance was as (more or less) usual something which would befall drummer Laust Sonne.
Already from the start I had absentmindedly noticed that it was a strange looking chair he was sitting in for playing drums, but hadn’t really given it much more thought than that until we arrived at The Road Below Me, where he was suddenly strapped down to the chair, after which the whole drum setup began tilting forward, ending with Sonne hanging from his chair above the drums whilst giving a pretty impressive mid-song drum solo! This was also where Binzer made his mock phone-call, claiming that the show was now over, and as the electricity had been cut they’d have to leave Sonne hanging there until another day…
There were of course other tricks in the show as well, like Stig Pedersen’s rocket helmet, which seemed to be fuelled by nothing less than rocket fuel this evening, as the sparkles flew all the way up to the stage ceiling. As it rained down, I was almost afraid it would set fire to Binzer’s long hair, as several of the large, glowing bits got tangled in it. Luckily, nothing of that sort happened, though there were also other times where fire could easily have been a part of ending the show quickly; anyone who has seen this quartet live previously knows that Pedersen has a knack for climbing on top of things, and this night was no exception.
The only problem was that when he climbed on top of the stage speakers, it looked like he came dangerously close to the very violent flame-throwers which were placed just behind them. Again, nothing happened, but it must have been pretty hot for him at times in that plastic outfit of his…

D-A-D is sort of like a pizza, in the understanding that even when they are bad, they are still pretty damn good.
Now, I would certainly not go as far as calling D-A-D’s performance this night bad, or anything near it; in fact, it was pretty damn good! Still, if I must complain, and this time I feel I must, it would be by saying that the show, and the setlist in particular, felt very safe and a bit unimaginative. We were treated to hits from start to finish yes, but we were treated to the same hits that we always hear. After seeing D-A-D for as many times as I have by now (can’t even remember how many those are…), it would be nice to hear something unexpected from their big bag of goodies.
Still, it was a very good show, and I was thoroughly entertained when they finally left, after two surely planned encores.

Setlist:

Evil Twin
Bad Craziness
Beautiful Together
Soft Dogs
Nineteenhundredandyesterday
Scare Yourself
Black Crickets
Monster Philosophy
Jihad
Sleeping My Day Away
The Road Below Me
Reconstrucdead
Everything Glows
Laugh ‘N’ A ½
It’s After Dark

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