If you know anything about this site, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we enjoy the musical exploits of Peter Tägtgren - Pain alone has been covered 42 times (this included) so far.
Yet, with Sweden being our close neighbours, and given the years we’ve spent following this band around, isn’t it odd that this is only the second time they stop to play in Denmark?
I guess we’re lucky that The Halo Effect chose to play here, and we surely weren’t about to miss out on Pain playing in our hometown for the first, hopefully not the last, time!

“Good evening Copenhagen, how goes? Should we do this in Swedish or English? I could do it in Chinese.”
- Peter Tägtgren (vocals/guitar)

The intro this night was short and the band was quick to come on stage and begin playing, throwing us into It’s Only Them. This is, as far as I can tell, the first time we see this song in the opening position, and it worked really well, full of energy from the get go.
The band wasn’t half-bad either, as they headbanged away for what they were worth, but it wasn’t until the fourth song of the night, Zombie Slam, that they actually started moving about a bit. For a band that’s usually very active and open to mess around with each other, it did come off as a slightly tame opening, even despite the headbanging.
The show did grow however, in a slowly upgoing curve, and became more engaging as time went on. It was fun to see that much of their antics were still in the set, even though they were doing a supporting and not headlining gig. The one thing truly missing was the Joakim Brodén puppet that shows up in Call Me. I was wondering how they’d get around this, now as they weren’t using their usual video background, but instead they made a confused stop where it was supposed to come in, and Peter Tägtgren looked over to Sebastian Svalland and said that he needed someone to clone Brodén and without skipping a beat, Svalland shouted “Primo Victoria” into his mic - perfect! He then proceeded to sing Brodén’s parts of the song.

“How are you doing, are you warmed up yet? I mean, it’s our job to warm you up. So are you warmed up? No?! Well get ready, you asked for it!”
- Peter Tägtgren (vocals/guitar)

Like the band, the crowd took a while to get moving. It had definitely increased a lot in mass since Bloodred Hourglass, but the action was yet to show up. To begin with, there were some spread out shouts and a few raised arms here and there, but as mentioned above, as time went on, Denmark warmed up to the Swedish band step by step. It wasn’t until the final song of the evening however, Shut Your Mouth, and the entertaining antics of the alien mascot teasing the musicians in various ways, culminating in it entering the security pit and having us all give the band the middle finger, that the Danes truly livened up and got into the spirit of it, but of course that was a little late, as the show was now effectively over.
Well, ok, a bit of fun had definitely been had with the beach balls during Party In My Head as well.

It didn’t take as long for the band to get there. As soon as they started playing dress-up, starting with the disco song Go With The Flow which saw Svalland switching to a small keyboard and Jonathan Olsson to a keytar, the band really found their groove. Up to this point, it had been nice but also a bit Pain(t) by numbers, but as soon as they were let loose to play around and get silly, it got really good.
Let's just hope it doesn't take them another 29 years before they come back to Copenhagen.

Setlist:

It’s Only Them
Don’t Wake The Dead
Call Me
Zombie Slam
Suicide Machine
I’m Going In
Monkey Business
Go With The Flow
Same Old Song
The Great Pretender
Party In My Head
Have A Drink On Me
Shut Your Mouth