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Unleashed
Sweden Rock Festival - 2009
Text: Tobias Nilsson Photo: Lunah Lauridsen
The first band for us on the Friday was another celebration of an anniversary here at Sweden Rock Festival.
This time it was the Stockholm Vikings of Unleashed, and they were celebrating 20 years as a group. My only thought was;”How will this ice-cold death metal hold up in the warm midday sun?”
Pretty well, it turned out.
They had drawn out a midsize crowd to their gig at the Zeppelin Stage, where especially the front was very much into the whole thing.
Likewise did the band seem to enjoy themselves, and vocalist/bassist Johnny Hedlund was acting well as speaker in between songs as well as leading the crowd into various sing-along’s throughout the route of the Unleashed setlist where such songs as This Is Our World Now, In Victory Or Defeat and Death Metal Victory stood out from the crowd.
It wasn’t all warm sunshine and happy singing however. In Winterland the all too familiar rain started pouring down on us, but to the audiences credit I should mention that except for two umbrellas (something that should be banned from concerts) and some rain-ponchos no one seemed to be bothered at all by this. The rain did as it had done for the most of the time until now, with disappearing for some minutes only to come back a little more, then disappearing and kept changing for the rest of the show.
As I mentioned Unleashed had its 20th birthday this year and this was humbly commented by Hedlund;”We’re celebrating our 20th birthday, but fuck that, we’re looking forward to the next 20 years!”
As a response to this the assembled crowd started a spontaneous Happy Birthday song, and it was easy to see how the band was touched by this. Not something I would have expected from a brutal death metal act, but Unleashed have many times hit me as a band which truly care about their fans.
Another thing which supported this attitude was the fact that even though they were really stretching their stage-time to the utmost, they still came on a second time and performed two encore tracks.
If something negative is to said, it would probably be that the setlist was a bit ordinary for the Swedes, but this could also just be seen as a request to change it up some more for the next time…
Then again, according to Lunah (Lauridsen) who is much more into this band than I am, it was the best show she had ever seen them perform, so it can’t have bothered that much.
Setlist:
The Greatest Of All Lies
Never Ending Hate
Your Children Will Burn
This Is Our World Now
Winterland
Don’t Want To Be Born
Black Horizon
In Victory Or Defeat
Into Glory Ride
Midvinterblot
Hammer Battalion
To Asgaard We Fly
Death Metal Victory
Encore:
The Final Silence
Before The Creation Of Time
This time it was the Stockholm Vikings of Unleashed, and they were celebrating 20 years as a group. My only thought was;”How will this ice-cold death metal hold up in the warm midday sun?”
Pretty well, it turned out.
They had drawn out a midsize crowd to their gig at the Zeppelin Stage, where especially the front was very much into the whole thing.
Likewise did the band seem to enjoy themselves, and vocalist/bassist Johnny Hedlund was acting well as speaker in between songs as well as leading the crowd into various sing-along’s throughout the route of the Unleashed setlist where such songs as This Is Our World Now, In Victory Or Defeat and Death Metal Victory stood out from the crowd.
It wasn’t all warm sunshine and happy singing however. In Winterland the all too familiar rain started pouring down on us, but to the audiences credit I should mention that except for two umbrellas (something that should be banned from concerts) and some rain-ponchos no one seemed to be bothered at all by this. The rain did as it had done for the most of the time until now, with disappearing for some minutes only to come back a little more, then disappearing and kept changing for the rest of the show.
As I mentioned Unleashed had its 20th birthday this year and this was humbly commented by Hedlund;”We’re celebrating our 20th birthday, but fuck that, we’re looking forward to the next 20 years!”
As a response to this the assembled crowd started a spontaneous Happy Birthday song, and it was easy to see how the band was touched by this. Not something I would have expected from a brutal death metal act, but Unleashed have many times hit me as a band which truly care about their fans.
Another thing which supported this attitude was the fact that even though they were really stretching their stage-time to the utmost, they still came on a second time and performed two encore tracks.
If something negative is to said, it would probably be that the setlist was a bit ordinary for the Swedes, but this could also just be seen as a request to change it up some more for the next time…
Then again, according to Lunah (Lauridsen) who is much more into this band than I am, it was the best show she had ever seen them perform, so it can’t have bothered that much.
Setlist:
The Greatest Of All Lies
Never Ending Hate
Your Children Will Burn
This Is Our World Now
Winterland
Don’t Want To Be Born
Black Horizon
In Victory Or Defeat
Into Glory Ride
Midvinterblot
Hammer Battalion
To Asgaard We Fly
Death Metal Victory
Encore:
The Final Silence
Before The Creation Of Time
Unleashed
