Køge Festuge, as the name implies a weeklong city festivity in Køge, isn’t exactly a festival we have frequented much. In fact, we’ve only been there once before, for Dizzy Mizz Lizzy back in 2010, but as they had for this year put D-A-D as the headliner of the final day, we now had a strong reason to return.

So, well armed with a draft beer in one hand and good friends as company, we were now ready to watch the Danish kings of rock for no less than the fourth time this year – the year of their 30th anniversary.
One might rightfully think that since we had already seen them three times in one year, this would surely just be a repetition of what we had already seen before, and while this was true for parts of the setlist, it certainly wasn’t true for the overall show, nor the overall setlist for that matter!
In fact, already during the intro we could hear a change – this time around there was a really old Danish song (which I cannot name due to ignorance) which was then followed by loud motorcycle noises, making me think more about Manowar than the D-A-D I know.

“Dear Køge, how do you do?”
- Stig Pedersen (bass/vocals)

The D-A-D I know entered soon enough though, and once more opened their set with Jihad, a song that as of late has proven a very effective opener for their party-filled and crowd-pleasing concerts. Well, ok, I’ve only heard them open one show with the song lately, but it worked damn well there.
The cool stage setup was easily recognisable from what we had seen them with at Copenhell, what with the high drumkit and the bent speaker racks, but slight differences were also apparent here – for one thing Stig Pedersen was wearing a chainmail at the start of the show, but he was of course frequently changing parts of his outfit during the show.
Visually, D-A-D were going all out on this one – Pedersen’s more frequent wardrobe changes have already been mentioned, but there was also a lot of well-placed and good looking pyrotechnics, both from the stage, the drums that Laust Sonne burned down with a blazing solo, and of course from Pedersen’s head in Sleeping My Day Away. The Binzer brothers had more traditional apparel, but weighed in with a lively performance from both of them, Jacob ‘Cobber’ Binzer even treated us to a little dance during his extended solo in Riding With Sue and both a jump and guitar trick at the end of the show.

“Dear Køge, repeat after me – pip, pip, pip!”
- Jesper Binzer (vocals/guitar)

Jesper Binzer on the other hand was full of jokes and witty remarks, and not the old tried ones either. I have for example never heard him say that Laust Sonne has taken a summer class every Tuesday in thrash metal (because don’t we always lack some thrash metal?), a comment which was of course succeeded by a short, fast, and hard-hitting riff to prove the point.
Later in the set, Jesper Binzer said that he too in fact had taken a class, a class on couples therapy, and that he now wanted to join the men and women of Køge in a kind and respectful way – thus the women should sing “yippee, yippee, yippee ay yeah!” and the men should in return answer “you’ve got a monster philosophy”. Exactly how this would help anybody I have no idea, but I sure was glad to hear the very potent Trucker / Monster Philosophy mash-up again!
Uniting or not, Køge thrived in singing along, not just to this song but all of the great classics they were presented to – Sleeping My Day Away was the crowning jewel of sing-along action of course, but there were many more great points than this!
All in all, the town-square of Køge was filled to the brim with people from all sorts of lives, backgrounds, and presents, and it was easy to see that D-A-D doesn’t need a special theme-song to unite the masses, just showing up and playing does the trick quite well by itself.

Still, we did get a lot of songs!
As I mentioned, the opening of the show went quite like the one in Trelleborg, but this was a headliner gig whereas they in Sweden had played as special guest, and because of this they had a lot more time to fill this time around. The Trucker / Monster Philosophy mash-up was a great big positive surprise as I mentioned, but so was Jonnie which certainly is a rare treat, and I believe it has been some time since Bad Craziness and Grow Or Pay were constant companions of the D-A-D tour setlist.
D-A-D also expanded on several of their songs, adding a drum-solo here, a guitar-solo there, and a sing-along in a third place. Sonne’s flaming drums were surprisingly moved out of I Want What She’s Got and instead placed at the end of Everything Glows, whereas the “kom så Laust” chant came up as early as Point Of View.
What was a real face-melter though, was Cobber’s highly likely improvised new solo for Laugh ‘N’ A ½ - I had figured on something from his side since he had also rearranged the solo at their recent Trelleborg show, but that it would be something completely different, now in a much more Spanish/Latin direction whereas the other had been in a more classical way, I had no idea, and once again he effortlessly proved how highly qualified he is at his instrument of choice!

Just as in 2010, Køge proved itself to be a very good host, but whereas I ended my Dizzy Mizz Lizzy review by saying that they might not have a long-lasting impression, D-A-D surely proved that they were up for the task of delivering a highly memorable show where they all were on the top of their game, and that even old dogs can provide new tricks!

Setlist:

Jihad
Evil Twin
Overmuch
Point Of View
A New Age Moving In
Riding With Sue
Jonnie
Grow Or Pay
Reconstrucdead
Trucker / Monster Philosophy
Everything Glows
Solo (Sonne)
Bad Craziness
Sleeping My Day Away
Laugh ‘N’ A ½
It’s After Dark