Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens had the unwelcome task of opening up the show on the last day of Sweden Rock Festival, and not so surprisingly it was only a loosely packed midsize audience who had met up before the Rock Stage to listen to his bid on the heavy metal genre.

“Pretend to sing along to this one, it’ll work better that way!”
- Tim 'Ripper' Owens (vocals)

Owens did what he could to wake the assembled people out of their three days drinking binge hangover, and in some points it worked, others it was a somewhat lazy response.
Still, he fought on, and so did the band he had brought along as well. They were a group of very prominent musicians in their own right; on guitars we saw Chris Caffery (ex-Savatage, ex-Metalium) and John Comprix (Beyond Fear, Ringworm), on bass David Ellefson (F5, ex-Megadeth) and last but not least on drums Simon Wright (Dio, ex-AC/DC). Especially Caffery impressed me with his very vital stage performance.

Owens also put some time aside to promote his new solo album Play My Game; he said he counted on everyone present to go over to the merchandise booth after the show and buy it.
If someone did or not, I cannot say, but we were treated to several songs from it in the set, amongst others The Shadows Are Alive, Death Race, To Live Again, The World Is Blind and of course the title track of the album.

Towards the end of the show Owens made a solemn promise to come down later on and have a drink with his fans, but only as long as someone else was buying!

As I have not yet been bitten by the Ripper bug, the show left me somewhat unaffected, but I’m sure the true fans assembled had a good time; it looked that way.