After a short trip down gloom road with Paradise Lost, we were once again back on track to power metal Shangri-La with Swedish heavyweight champions of the genre, Hammerfall.

Hammerfall opened with the hardrock grooving song Punish And Enslave from their latest album No Sacrifice, No Victory to a giant crowd stretching out in all directions. I was impressed with how it had grown since the last bands performance, and how everyone was in on the fun straight from the start, working out their ‘Slayer-necks’, as vocalist Joacim Cans preferably calls the wild headbanging the band tries to bring out in their fans.
As always, the show was filled with classical crowd-pleasing parts, like the scream-along intro for Let The Hammer Fall, the aforementioned ‘Slayer-neck’ workout, and of course a loud and generally pleasing sing-along to all of the songs, this being the primary strength of genre in which Hammerfall has made such a big name of themselves.
Some touches on a more personal level was also added to the show, like in introducing Any Means Necessary as especially dedicated to a girl from the signing-line, who had said that this was Hammerfall’s best song, and also in the on-stage signing for some lucky guy by Cans and drummer Anders Johansson (what this latest stunt was all about I do not know, but it was fun to watch).

With their 17 years and 7 albums long history, Hammerfall can by all right be called veterans of the business, and even though they have had a frequently changed line-up of members through the years, the routine gathered by the band was clearly visible in their stage performance, which was executed in a very professional manner, although a little bit more unpredictability would have been nice. There wasn’t really anything here you haven’t seen them do so many times before.
Even with this, I would be lying if I said it didn’t look like the band members were enjoying themselves on the stage, as they continuously messed about with each other for our entertainment, and in the end they managed to pull a more than decent show out of the hat which certainly was pleasing to the fans.
Maybe they should just try a little harder to break out of their known safety-zone for their future shows? We don’t want things to grow stagnant, now do we?

Setlist:

Punish And Enslave
The Dragon Lies Bleeding
Crimson Thunder
Hallowed Be My Name
Renegade
Last Man Standing
Blood Bound
Heeding The Call
Rebel Inside
Any Means Necessary
Stronger Than All
Riders Of The Storm
Secrets
Let The Hammer Fall
Hearts On Fire