It had saddened me to leave the best Sabaton gig I have seen in a long while, but it was for a mighty good reason, and this gave me solace as I walked towards the 2nd stage at Metaldays.

That reason was spelled Tiamat, and according to depressing rumours started by themselves on their Facebook page a while earlier, this could very well be the last chance we had of seeing them perform as vocalist Johan Edlund had stated that he’d quit the band once the summer festival tour was over. To the best of my knowledge this hasn’t happened, but neither of us were going to take the chance. And to be honest, seeing Tiamat is such a rare treat that we would go there even without the threat of the band splitting up afterwards.

As Tiamat was the last band of the festival (what a worthy way to end it), they were of course playing in the ink-black night, and thus a smile couldn’t help but escape as Edlund took the stage wearing big, black sunglasses. Other than that, he and the rest of the band looked like they had just walked in off the street – this was a show scraped to the bone and only going for the essentials, the music and the delivery.
Divided was the song that would open the concert, a great song which has seen more spins than I care to remember at the Metalmoments HQ, and here we were introduced to the idea of Roger Örjesson handling the female vocals. It took some mental adjustment, but I will praise them doing it this way instead of having pre-recorded vocals just played over the PA.
The set was varied both in timeline of the band, and in mood and atmosphere, and with 15 songs played I doubt anyone could honestly say that they were disappointed – well, maybe with the exception of the guy who kept shouting for Treblinka songs, but that’s another story…
The band members kept their performance in the same line as their appearance, a strict minimum. Yet there was a near tangible atmosphere and a fervor that no other band had replicated during the entire festival. When Phantasma De Luxe was played I nearly fell over from the ecstatic feeling produced, and when Keops Pyramid, a cover from Hoola Bandoola Band (the most famous Swedish prog-rock band of yesteryears (info: in Sweden the prog prefix referred to a political movement rather than musical)), was played I could only think about how great it was to hear Edlund sing in Swedish again, something I don’t recall him doing since his solo-show at Sweden Rock Festival back in 2010 (interestingly enough he was also pitted at the same time as Sabaton at that time).

Heading back to the consideration that Sabaton were, at least part of the time, still playing their headlining show at the main stage, and taking into account how large their crowd had been, I was impressed by the amount of people that were hanging over at the 2nd stage, waiting for Tiamat. Sure, more and more people showed up once the other concert was over, but already from the start Tiamat had a nice following.
Given the nature of the show, it wasn’t a terribly wild audience, and with a few spread thanks and thumbs up being nearly the sole contact between band and audience there really was no reason to whip up a riot – a nice set of rhythmic applause got to strengthen the beginning of Vote For Love, and that was about it for the interaction section.
This doesn’t mean that people weren’t interested though, it was simply one of those gigs where you can allow yourself to get introspective and forget everything around you. And sing along of course. You can always sing along.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, there is nothing but love from this site to Tiamat. What a way to end a festival! Thank you Tiamat for delivering such a concert, and thank you Metaldays for adding them to the line-up, and giving them this position! Now, let’s just hope that Edlund never returns to the silly thoughts of quitting…

Setlist:

Divided
Children Of The Underworld
Cain
Brighter Than The Sun
Phantasma De Luxe
Cold Seed
Whatever That Hurts
As Long As You Are Mine
Until The Hellhounds Sleep Again
Vote For Love
Misantropolis
Keops Pyramid (Hoola Bandoola Band cover)
Wings Of Heaven
The Sleeping Beauty
Gaia