I was really glad to see that Pain was playing Markthalle for their Hamburg show, as it had been far too long a time since my last visit. I love Markthalle; think it’s one of the best venues I’ve visited. Big but not too big, and it also has a great layout for seeing the bands.

Just as Brother Firetribe before them, Pain took full advantage of the larger scene and got to show off more (still not all though) of their new stage set up. A bigger metallic arrangement, two video screens and a new, much larger backdrop was what they had brought. I’ve seen some video showing a large pyro show as well, but that wasn’t here. Probably not high enough to the ceiling.
Just as for the last show the intro was showing an entering of the venue of the night, this time around Markthalle of course (fun remark: in Berlin we had ended up telling Ewo, their tour manager, off for not doing anything (we were drunk), and right at the end of this video we could see Ewo doing, well, nothing…).
As the band came on, it was clear to see that they were in at least as good a mood as they had been the night before, possibly even better, and they were going at it with full power. Especially Johan Husgafvel (bass) took advantage of the bigger space as he moved a lot from side to side, but the others weren’t bad either.

The crowd had grown considerably since the Brother Firetribe concert and already in Zombie Slam a small moshpit broke out, but apart from that I found the audience abnormally still, both for a Pain crowd and also for a German crowd in general. I couldn’t quite figure out why, still haven’t… Still, there were definitely moments worth remembering, as when someone threw their panties up on Peter Tägtgren’s guitar as they came on for the first encore. He kept them hanging from the headstock for the rest of the night, so he probably found it amusing as well.

As I said the video projection started out in the same fashion as for the Berlin show, but what I found interesting was that for several of the songs it did not follow the same line of pictures as it had shown before. For instance, for both Hate Me and End Of The Line the official video clips were displayed at this show whereas there had only been some form of lightshow before. Variation is a good thing, and there is always room for a little surprise, so this was definitely a good thing in my opinion.
What was not so good was the sound, but this was merely because of the place I was standing I found out later… I was standing right in the front row, just a bit out to the side, and in this position I ended up somewhat behind the speakers, which led me to almost only hearing vocals and drums (which were excellently handled by the stand in Tomas Lindgren), but as I tried moving back a bit, the sound was much better.

So, all in all, what’s the verdict?
Well, I have to say that even though the crowd was a bit disappointing this day, I still find it impressive the amount of energy the band displayed. This is for sure one of the best Pain concerts I have witnessed.

Setlist:

I’m Going In
Follow Me
Zombie Slam
Suicide Machine
Stay Away
Bitch
Dancing With The Dead
On Your Knees (Again)
Crashed
Walking On Glass
Don’t Care
Just Hate Me
End Of The Line
Nailed To The Ground
It’s Only Them
On And On
Same Old Song
Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles cover)
Shut Your Mouth
Have A Drink On Me
Bye/Die
Greed