Again with the quitting on us!
Yes, Dia Psalma had once again declared that they were going to split, for good this time, and whether or not that is to be believed, I’m not one for missing the possibly last chance to catch the kings of Swedish folk/sing-along/punkrock live!

Said and done, we hauled our asses to Helsingborg in the south of Sweden, where the band was set to play at a venue called The Tivoli, a place I’ve never visited before...
The location was nice, directly located in the town centre and consisting of one concert hall which was oddly wide and shallow, with a balcony overhead, and one dining room adjacent to it in the same building.
Dia Psalma had two support acts for the evening, Trash Amigos and Snakestorm, but as we ran into some unfortunate problems travelling there we only made it in time for the main event, and had to postpone checking them out till a later event.

By way of coming full circle on their career, Dia Psalma were playing their debut album, Gryningstid, in its entirety this tour, followed in the encore by choice cuts from the rest of their releases (these varied from show to show), so it was a predictable start when the band took the stage and let Requiem ring throughout the hall. Predictable, yet still so damn delicious!
One thing did hit me though, and I couldn’t at the time quite make up my mind about whether it was a good thing or a bad one (still haven’t actually, although I think I’m leaning towards the latter); as well-known as the songs are to me (I’ve heard Gryningstid a million times or more), it was clear for everyone to hear that the band had updated them in way of letting Pontus Andersson perform newly composed guitar-solo’s where he saw fit. Well, this was one thing which, like it or not, could meld into the songs as mere updates, but what was worse was that Andersson also had upgraded his gear which gave the whole sound a much more heavy vibe which didn’t fit in at all, neither with the sound of the rest of the band (which had pretty much the same old sound which we know and love) nor with the sound of the music. Even when he was playing parts of the songs which had always been there, it still came off wrong due to the more aggressive tone of his instrument.
Where the sound may have fallen through, the gear lifted the weight in another department instead; the seemingly random placing of badly home-painted amps did loads to provide the right punky atmosphere of the show and was an ideal setting for this kind of show.

Also both bassist Fredrik ’Ztikkan’ Blomberg, who stood for most of the communication this evening, and guitarist/vocalist Mikael ’Ulke’ Johansson were great at conveying that same, punky attitude which fit the band like hand in glove. I mean, honestly, it’s just so right to see Ulke, around 45 year of age, play his guitar looking just as awkward as a teenager who’s just cutting his teeth on his first guitar (actually, his guitar of choice, a Gibson SG, called to mind a lot of youths playing the Guitar Hero game). When it came to Stefan ’Stipen’ Carlsson I just couldn’t get by that epic moustache he’d grown since the last time around, so it’s hard to say anything about his performance...

The Helsingborg crowd, which was a widely mixed bunch judging from the looks of them, was extremely enthusiastic about the show; from the very second the band took the stage there were large shouts, both for song wishes and for the band members.
Someone was constantly shouting ”Ulke är min hjälte!” (=Ulke is my hero), and there was also a slightly intoxicated man (the same maybe?) who tried to get his CD signed during the songs. Ztikkan patiently tried to point out to him that he should wait till after the show, and after a while the man gave in and put his pen back in his pocket.
I don’t know how many times I heard the audience shout for Balladen Om Lilla Elsa, but the band kept a pretty low profile on giving a straight answer to this, often opting for pretending to mishear the audience by instead of saying Elsa asked if they were supposed to Hälsa (=greet) someone, and to be true, the mega-hit was in fact not on tonight’s setlist (I was able to keep an eye on it from my position in the first row).
The other songs Dia Psalma pulled out of the bag were extremely well-received, and the only thing hindering the hard moshing from full-blown havoc was the fact that the hall was so tightly packed that it was a very limited space the crowd had to move around on; instead there were arms raised in the air, and there was a healthy dose of singing along to each and every tune.
Nobody really believed that the band would leave without paying their flagship hit though, and after the band had played the final song on the setlist, Luft, said their thanks and left the stage the crowd was still enthusiastically calling out for that one final song, Balladen Om Lilla Elsa. After a while, the members came back on stage and accepted the audiences challenge, but they had one demand of us; we had to sing the lyrics. Well now, this proved an easily beatable challenge; every single word of the verses were loudly sung, in time and all, and the band only came in and sang backing vocals for us during the choruses!

What was a bit surprising was that the band had not chosen a single song off of either of their post-reunion albums for the first encore, but apart from this things went down precisely the way anyone could have hoped for, and I can’t imagine better way to send off one of Sweden’s greatest punk-heroes than a sweaty, loud and drunken club-gig such as this, and from the looks of the band, they shared the same feeling. It is almost ironical to think that they, here on their deathbed, seemed more alive than they have done in a long time!

Setlist:

Requiem
Alla Älskar Dig
Mamma
Hon Får...
Tro Rätt, Tro Fel
Den Som Spar...
Emelie
Kalla Sinnen
Grytfot
Gryningsvisa I D-Moll
Sol Över Oss
Öga För Öga
Vi Svartnar
Illusioner
Det Döende Barnet
Vad Har Du Kvar
Hon Kom Över Mon (Contact cover)
Luft
Encore:
Balladen Om Lilla Elsa