When Engel were visiting Copenhagen on their co-headline tour with Avatar, it was a relatively new band from Örebro, Sweden, that was supporting them, and they went by the name Smash Into Pieces.
Having gained a reputation in 2009 in the TV competition Sweden Got Talent, and then releasing their debut album Unbreakable in April 2013, the band plays a radio-friendly combination of melodic rock and modern metal, leading thoughts equally to tour mates Engel as they do to such bands as Live or their own much favoured Alter Bridge and the like. Their music isn’t really reinventing the cup of tea, but the songs are catchy and well-written enough to go down easily.

“Copenhagen, are you ready for us?!”
- Chris Adam Hedman Sörbye (vocals)

All this I didn’t know at the time though, as Smash Into Pieces was a completely new card for me (as was Avatar later on, but that’s another story), but I was in a good mood and looked forward to hearing what they had to offer as they played the small venue KB18 in Copenhagen’s old meat-packing district.
The first song played was to be Heroes (As We Are), and the sound bite like intro was played without anyone actually being on the stage – instead the members of the band were standing down at the other end of the locale, using the short intro to walk across the room and take the low stage from the front, gliding through the audience on the way there. This proved an easier task than what might have been expected since the total amount of guests inhabiting KB18 at this time could not have exceeded seven, and that’s including yours truly and Lunah Lauridsen (our photographer)…
This can’t have been exactly what the band was hoping for, as was evident by their surprised expressions as they took the stage and turned around to face us, but to the bands credit it only took them a split second to make up their minds that no matter how many, or few in this case, people were there to watch them, they were still going to put on quite a show!

Already in the first song, headbanging and posing was the name of the game, a game Smash Into Pieces was playing as good as any top-professional band in the same vein of music that I have seen, better than many even. The boxed and tight sound at KB18 made the band sound heavier and a bit more aggressive than I feel they do on album, but this wasn’t a bad thing as it worked with their lively performance and probably spoke more to the audience of the tour.
The band was also not afraid to expand the liveliness, thus in the second song they all jumped in sync to the riffing, but the failure of getting the audience truly involved in this activity made for more innovating, and in the third song we saw guitarist Per Bergquist get off the stage and run down to the people sitting in the couch down by the opposite wall, a thing he would repeat again later in the set.
I on the other hand had taken a spot much closer to the stage, and in the side of bassist Viktor ‘Virre’ Vidlund and guitarist Benjamin ‘Banjo’ Jennebo (stage-sides were hard to determine as they all moved about a lot, but this was the general position) who were both headbanging and posing like crazy, and seemed genuinely happy that someone was getting into the show, and together we had a lot of fun throughout the bands seven songs.
Drummer Isak Snow also looked like he enjoyed this special show, but it was a bit harder to tell as he was hidden in shadows at the back of the stage where only little light fell. Vocalist Sörbye was a bit calmer than his stringed companions, but also made a very good effort to engage the visitors in scream-along and rhythmic applause.

As you can imagine, it was hard for Smash Into Pieces to invoke much of an active participation from the small crowd, but they did all they could short of threatening us and it paid off in applause and a shout or two between songs, and I feel confident that things would have looked very different indeed had there been more people present. I on my hand figured that just as the band the best thing to do was to start with yourself, and thus I happily headbanged my way through most of the set and had a great time with it.
Smash Into Pieces, and the concert in general, only had the one big drawback of extremely bad timing, where on the very same date as these guys were playing, Copenhagen was hosting one festival and a large-scale pre-party for another festival – no wonder then that the metal community of the capitol was spread rather thin.
This was sad though, as Smash Into Pieces put in such an impressive effort, made us feel so good from the beginning and effectively warming us up (almost using our entire energy supply in fact) for the rest of the evening, and to round things up at the end of the show, they once again jumped off the stage as the instruments were still ringing out, and as they left they shook everyone’s hand and personally thanked them for showing up – that is both humility and humour right there!

Setlist:

Heroes (As We Are)
Colder
Rockstar
A Friend Like You
I Want You To Know
Crash And Burn
Fading