Sweden Rock Festival is probably the best festival venue I can think of for a band like W.A.S.P.
The age-group and general direction of the music here should favour an older band like this.
This could be, and probably is, the reason for the great turn-out for the bands gig here. They were playing the Rock Stage, one of the main stages, and were almost playing headline, only topped by Guns N’ Roses who were playing directly afterwards. But enough about them, this was W.A.S.P.’s time, and they were set on making the most of it.

Already early in the set, Blackie Lawless (or Steven Edward Duren as his parents would call him) and his current band line-up consisting of Doug Blair (lead guitar), Mike Duda (bass) and Mike Dupke on drums, played three songs from the very early days of the band, to set the mood and get the party going. The songs were On Your Knees, L.O.V.E. Machine and Wild Child, and they were in fact the three first songs of the setlist; setlist which would go on to contain such old tracks as The Last Command, The Idol and newer ones like Babylon’s Burning and Crazy, both from W.A.S.P.’s latest album, Babylon.
Of course, no W.A.S.P. concert could go without their own superhit I Wanna Be Somebody, and this show was no exception, and of course it generated a thundering sing-along, and Lawless also took the time to make a shouting competition out of it, you know the ones where the audience gets divided by the middle, and the frontman tries to make the two sides outdo each other in screaming the loudest. Let’s just say, it worked like a charm.

As I said in the beginning, SRF is a perfect setting for W.A.S.P., and it was easy to see the crowd loved their old heroes. The general shouts and applause, and the conviction in the shout contest made sure no one would be in doubt if the show was appreciated; and appreciated it was! So much in fact that as a reward for the contest, the band threw out t-shirts for the winners, shirts there definitely erupted a lot of fights over.
For my own sake, I’ve never been much of a W.A.S.P. fan, and therefore apart from singing along to the most well-known hits, there wasn’t much for me. Like the last time I saw them, I missed the stage gear they used to bring along back in the days, and felt that this stripped show wasn’t much good for anything.
Sure, a band shouldn’t need all sorts of visual concepts to make a convincing show, but when you, like me, doesn’t really know or care much for the music, the extras do come in handy...