Pain was once again back in Sweden after the Europe leg of their tour, now with a new tour-name, Griståget (transl. The Pigtrain), and a new support band in Raubtier.
Now, I had heard about Raubtier before this, and I had even gone as far as checking a song or two out over the net, but I was far from experienced in their works. This was about to take a drastic change...

For those of you who haven’t heard about this band before, Raubtier is an industrial metal band from Haparanda, a city in the very north of Sweden. They have been called Sweden’s answer to Rammstein, and that explanation isn’t farfetched, although they have some keyboard melodies which also remind me of the night’s headliner.
More importantly than that though, is the fact that they know how to kick up a shit-storm of action in a live-setting, and they’re not afraid to do so!

Before the show though, we were led down an innocently deceptive path as the band had for their intro music chosen to use the theme melody from Björnes Magasin, a Swedish children’s program. Soon enough the real agenda became apparent though, as the band entered the stage and blew our faces off with a powerful deliverance of Det Finns Bara Krig! Already in this their first song it was clear to me that Raubtier would be the perfect support band for Pain, a band which have proven several times in the past that they have a knack for finding great support acts; why, it almost seemed like people had come to watch Raubtier as the primary band!
Yes, Mejeriet in Lund was pretty well-filled when the Northmen went on stage, and even though all of Raubtier’s lyrics are in Swedish, vocalist/guitarist Pär Hulkoff recognised the fact that dialects play a large part as well when dealing with this type of distances by apologising to everyone not understanding his northern speech (Lund is in the very south of Sweden). One thing dialects did not become a hindrance to, was the agreement that alcohol was needed, or as Hulkoff commented; ”Well, I know this is only a normal Wednesday evening, but if it was me in the crowd I would be lying passed out in front of the stage by now.” Impressive words, considering it wasn’t all that long ago that the doors for the venue had been opened!

The fact that Raubtier was loved by tonight’s concert-guests was clearly established not only by the constant pressure of people trying to be close to the stage or simply moshing and headbanging, but also by the immense clapping to Hulkovius Rex and the fact that the crowd sang every word of the verse of Hjärteblod by themselves, a seldom seen feat even for headliners and this was ”only” the support! Heck, when we reached the encore everyone was ready to jump along to Raubtier’s hit Världsherravälde; the floor quaked under our feet! Judging from the response Raubtier was getting, they might as well have been tonight’s headliner act; Pain had their work cut out for them trying to top this later on.
Maybe this was the reason that Pain’s main man Peter Tägtgren wanted to take a closer look at what was going on; for Achtung Panzer he entered the stage to loud cheers of his own to lay down some backing vocals in the chorus of Achtung Panzer, something the crowd surely did not mind in the least.

Musically, we were being completely mangled by the fat industrial sound of Raubtier, and as luck would have it the sound in the hall was pretty good for the evening as well, although it was lacking somewhat when standing close to the centre of the frontline as I did in the beginning of the show.
Due to the style of the music, there wasn’t much o get in the way of solo’s either; in fact, I believe it wasn’t until as late as Polarvargen that we got our first real guitar solo in a song! This obviously gave Hulkoff a taste for more though and in the very next song, Änglar, he delivered a solo very poser-like on his knees! The best one though had nothing to do with this man, but rather with Jonas Kjellgren who after returning to the stage for the encore part gave a short taste of something as uncommon as a (and this is the best way I can describe it) drum-solo on his bass!

The Swedish leg of the Pain tour couldn’t possibly have had a better start than this. Even though I couldn’t say it for sure at the time (although I had a sneaking suspicion), I can now in retrospect say with full confidence that even though Pain went on to play a kick-ass show afterwards, it was still Raubtier that stood victorious at the end of the day. They played the most powerful show, and got the liveliest response from the audience all the way through.

Setlist:

Det Finns Bara Krig
Achtung Panzer
Lebensgefahr
Hulkovius Rex
Hjärteblod
Dieseldöden
Lennart
Legoknekt
Polarvargen
Änglar
Dobermann
Världsherravälde
Kamphund