Yet another old-school Sweden Rock Festival debut artist came in the guise of Bay Area thrashers Forbidden.
Twice before we have seen Forbidden perform, and twice before we have been taken aback by the pure force of their show; so it was with no small expectations we went to see them play the Sweden Stage here at the festival.

Given the Swedish audiences general interest in older bands (and newer bands pretending to be old) I was very surprised to see that there was only a small amount of people gathered with us in front of the stage, but an explanation might be found in the fact that Forbidden were set to play at the same time as Goda Grannar (Sweden Rocks more or less house-band) and Electric Boys (a Swedish glam legend) which both probably also pulled large crowds. Their loss I say.
As soon as the band came on stage the crowd doubled several times over in size, but it was still far from packed.

Without being put off by this in any way, Forbidden came on in strong style and delivered one brilliant song after the other. As is the trend right now for many bands, Forbidden also opted for playing an entire album through and through, and the album chosen for this was their second release Twisted Into Form (actually, I think they left the instrumental tracks Parting Of The Ways and Spiral Depression out).
After the last note of One Foot In Hell rang out, Russ Anderson said that this would be the last time we heard something from the Twisted Into Form and Forbidden Evil albums, as next time they came around it would be with an entirely new album. This produced a somewhat mixed response; there are most certainly many who have been looking forward to a new album from the band, but I’m sure that all those people are more than happy to hear their old favourites as well, and wouldn’t change them for anything…
After this Forbidden continued the show by playing a good selection of Forbidden Evil songs; sadly I have a problem with remembering titles so one of them, as I mentioned before, have been lost in the sands of time (edit note: it was Forbidden Evil).

Although the audience was not the largest I had seen on the festival, it did seem like it consisted of nothing but die-hard fans, and the response on the bands gig was incredible with a breakneck amount of headbanging, a mosh in the centre and of course singing/shouting along to the lyrics. Especially Follow Me saw a lot of this, but it was not alone.

I am still a big fan of Forbidden’s live-shows, and I am looking forward to hearing what they will bring to the table in the future.

Setlist:

Infinite
Out Of Body (Out Of Mind)
Step By Step
Twisted Into Form
R.I.P.
Tossed Away
One Foot In Hell
March Into Fire
Off The Edge
Forbidden Evil
Follow Me
Through Eyes Of Glass
Chalice Of Blood