The headlining act of For Evigt Rock was pretty much a given one. When creating an event to celebrate rock music in Denmark, who else could you put on the billing than Denmark’s most rocking band? Surprise, surprise, we’re talking about D-A-D here!

“Have you drunk enough to sing along? Have you drunk enough to sing along and clap your hands to the beat? Have you drunk enough to say anything goes? Even the bad toilet situation?!”
- Jesper Binzer (vocals/guitar)

Already before the band entered, we could see that we were in for a treat. The band had once again renewed itself and its performance. In front of us was a stage like I’ve never seen before from them – the all-covering back and side drops depicted a starry night in a desert landscape, and the stacks of amps on stage were arranged into two pyramid shapes. The drumkit looked minimalistic between them, but knowing Laust Sonne, he’d be able to get the best possible result out of even this. Above it all, a huge Molly light-rig shone down on us and the stage.
Not in line with the visual theme, the band’s intro music was that of the Big Bad Wolf theme played as marching music on drums and flute – it may not have gone with the visuals, but as far as the band goes, it was spot on!
Despite this venture along new ways, the band chose to open with a very safe card, Riskin’ It All (enjoy the irony of the title and the comment for a while), but the setlist would then reveal itself as being far from standardized! Sure, there were quite a few songs were used to by now, but with all those albums out, D-A-D have amassed quite a lot of fan favourites that are hard to remove. It was what was between these live staples though, that made the show really interesting. Anyone reading this site should be well up to date with my constant ramblings about the band needing to show more love for the Helpyourselfish album, and dare to venture outside of Reconstrucdead. Well, tonight we got not just one but two songs from said album, and none of them were Reconstrucdead! Don’t get me wrong, I love that track as much as the next net pet, but I also love all the other songs from the album, so to finally hear Written In Water and Soulbender was like a wet dream! This of course helped heavy up the concert quite a bit, another thing you won’t hear me complaining about, but overall it was some quite rocking, and often to the heavier side, tunes the band had picked for the evening.

“Come on Laust, scare yourself! Come on Laust, play so that you poop your pants!”
- Jesper Binzer (vocals/guitar)

All of these new changes seemed to have revitalized the band as well. They were truly on fire this evening!
I admit, if you break it apart and study each piece of the performance individually, you’ll recognise most of them, maybe even all, from other shows in the recent past. There’s the scream along to get Laust Sonne to do a drum solo, there are the prolonged guitar solos courtesy of Jacob Binzer, the crazy outfits and instruments that adorn Stig Pedersen, and the jokes from Jesper Binzer that fill the time between songs. All this we know, and have grown accustomed to, but it was in the piecing together of all of these elements that we on this night found a flame burning stronger than usual. And even with all of these extra activities, it still felt like the band was letting the music take the lead in the performance. They were climbing over each other to deliver, and yet seemed down to earth and relaxed. And having fun. That’s the main ingredient to take away from this show – that the band seemed to genuinely have fun playing for us.

Not surprisingly, this went straight to the centre and soul of the audience, which was as lively as it could be here in the wee hours of the night. It wasn’t an all-out metal crowd, although I did spot a surprisingly large amount of metalheads here, so I wasn’t surprised that the physical action was mainly contained in waving fists and devil horns in the air, but what may have lacked in physicality, the crowd made up for in aural contribution – there was shouting, chanting, and singing. From start to finish, side to side, up and down and all around! The jokes got laughs, the requests for shouts got drowned in the very thing they were asking for, and wave after wave of applause just kept rolling in. It wasn’t surprising to hear the loud response the band got, when the audience was allowed to take over completely in the first verse of the old hit favourite Sleeping My Day Away. Likewise, it is always fun to hear the voices drop off one by one, the further we get into the song, but that’s another story.
So, what had begun as a nice and pleasant day in the sun, now truly reached its crescendo as darkness had set in and the moon had taken hold of the sky, and D-A-D once again showed why they are the ruling heavyweight champions of Danish rock music.

Setlist:

Riskin’ It All
Evil Twin
Written In Water
Monster Philosophy
Girl Nation
Soulbender
A New Age Moving In
Riding With Sue
Soft Dogs
Everything Glows
Scare Yourself
Jihad
I Want What She’s Got
Bad Craziness
Sleeping My Day Away
It’s After Dark