Hammerfall was second up supporting Powerwolf on their tour, and in many ways, they felt like the odd man out of the bunch. They’re a lot older, both as people and as a band, than the other two, for one thing. They’re also the only band that’s not playing into a specific gimmick. Sure, they’re a lot about the hammers and the templars, but they’re not dressing up as such, nor are they basing their entire musicals and lyrical world around it. Their style is more classic power metal, whereas the other two have a more modern sound, coupled with the fact that Joacim Cans is the only vocalist of the three present singing in the classical high pitch. These are only a few things off the top of my head, but there are others as well.
Given the many differences, and the fact that when looking around me, I saw mainly a younger audience, I was unsure as to how the response would be for Hammerfall, but I need not worry.

“Good evening templars of Copen-fucking-hagen! Last I checked, it’s Thursday, and Thursday means party in Copenhagen!”
- Joacim Cans (vocals)

Already leading up to the band’s performance, it was easy to see how much more people there were in the audience than there had been for Wind Rose (and later, didn’t it feel like it was waning a bit during Powerwolf?). Hammerfall wasn’t about to leave anyone hanging, so they launched directly into Avenge The Fallen, using the songs own intro as an intro to give the musicians time to get on stage - and an impressive stage it was! If I hadn’t known better, I would have said that this was a headliner’s stage. There was a large castle stretching from side to side, with many levels that the band was more than willing to play around on throughout the gig. These old chaps are clearly in good shape!
Hammerfall was of course out to promote their latest release, also titled Avenge The Fallen, but the setlist overall was highly varied through their years, visiting no less than nine different albums, and still managing to pack it with familiar live classics. Sure, favourites were missing, especially so Glory To The Brave which had been played on their Freedom World Crusade tour up to the point that they joined arms with the other two bands, but you can’t have everything, apparently.

Hammerfall had a good grip on the hall however, and the Danish (and surely some Swedish) fans were more than ready to sing along to the anthems. Given this, it was quite surprising how many answered in affirmative on the question of how many were seeing Hammerfall for the first time this evening. I mean, that was a lot of hands that went up! Ok, so it did seem like some of the hands were the same that went up to the question of who had seen the band before, but isn’t that always the case?
Hammerfall was all about getting as much music across to the audience however, so they didn’t spend all that much time talking between songs, which was kind of nice. Not complaining about Cans’ communication skills, it was just nice to have the tempo stay high throughout, with as few pauses as possible.
That doesn’t mean that Cans couldn’t have a little fun though, as when he asked everyone to raise their left fist in the air and pretend it was a hammer, because apparently life’s just more fun with a personal hammer. He also wanted to praise the other bands on the tour, but there’s was a slight hiccup since he’d apparently forgotten who he was on tour with. He glossed it over as best he could with saying “the band before us, us, and the band playing later”, but the small pause before this told its own tale. There was another amusing blunder when he wanted to introduce the song Let The Hammer Fall by crying out "Let the" followed by commenting that there was no reason for him to name the rest, as the audience could just read it off the backdrop, after which he turned around to find that Hammerfall was in fact not written on said backdrop; it only had an image of their mascot battling it out with demons. Oh well, you can’t keep everything in your head, I suppose.

Despite these minor missteps, Hammerfall delivered a surprisingly vital and impressive show. The way they used the stage, even moving off the stage as Cans visited the security pit to get closer to the audience in Hearts On Fire, letting the fans sing along in the microphone, their tempo throughout, and their overall presence and attitude - it was all above expectations, and we had a great old time throughout. Well done. Well done, indeed.

Setlist:

Avenge The Fallen
Heeding The Call
Any Means Necessary
Hammer Of Dawn
Renegade
Hammer High
Last Man Standing
Let The Hammer Fall
The End Justifies
(We Make) Sweden Rock
Hail To The King
Hearts On Fire