What could be more appropriate than to headline Sweden day at Metaldays with the Swedish war-machine Sabaton? Not much I dare say, as the band not only continues to grow in popularity around Europe and the world, but also very much so at their bi-annual return to the festival in Tolmin which they were now headlining for the third time in a row.

“Seriously, we haven’t even started and I already have to tell you to shut up!”
- Joakim Brodén (vocals/guitar)

Announcing the band as always was the Europe song The Final Countdown, which for the second time in a row here had a special meaning as Sabaton was again the final band to play the main stage on the final day of Metaldays.
The crowd was as usual in full support, and sang along even to the intro. After this, something new happened... A guy dressed in an old-times mechanics suit ran onto the stage and shouted something in the mic before pulling away the cloth that had been covering the drumkit until now, revealing a huge tank-like setup with the drums on top – an incredibly cool way to renew the stage for the band which then continued in the traditional way with Ghost Division, a speedy song about how cool you can be with tanks. Sparklers blasted from the mini-guns mounted on the tank, and the battle was on!
With the exception of once again revealing a new drummer, this time Hannes Van Dahl, Sabaton ran smoothly on the tracks that they have run many times before – there were no real surprises in their highly energetic show, but the good-humoured will to entertain combined with good songs and a tank, yes A TANK, was enough by far to carry them all the way.
No, wait, that’s not entirely true – there was something else that was new as well, and that was seeing vocalist Brodén don a guitar, and after some loose jamming for the many crowd-surfers, he played third guitar in the new song Resist And Bite, a song in which the pyro-show was complimented by black confetti shooting out from the sound tower.

“Hey security, if you get any hot girls crowd-surfing, you should send them backstage instead of back into the crowd!”
- Brodén (vocals/guitar)

Especially crowd-surfing was a popular game amongst the Slovenian crowd this night – all the time large amounts of people were sailing by, and to the bands’ amusement it didn’t matter if they were playing music or just standing still taking a breather. This was of course commented on by Brodén, who put a beer on hold for anyone who could crowd-surf all the way from the back and up to the front of the stage, but he also admitted that it would be quite impossible for him to tell who did it if it worked.
The response was wild enough to prompt him to suggest a change in festival name from Metaldays to Crowd-surfing-days though, and seeing things a little bit from the side-line as I was, it was hard to argue with him!
Sabaton managed to get a few more or less personal greetings out as well, as Soldier Of 3 Armies was dedicated to a group holding up a Finnish flag, and Uprising went out to Maia (sorry if I wrote it wrong, I don’t know how her name is spelled), head of the Polish fan-club whom Brodén smilingly spotted in the crowd as well.
The crowd had a small say in how the night developed as well, as it was put to a vote whether Poltava should be sung in English or Swedish – the language which got the loudest cheers was named the winner, and Sweden was the version we got – the title track of the Carolus Rex album which had been played a little earlier was in English though, so there was something to please everyone.

Every good thing must come to an end though, and for us Sabaton came to an untimely fast end as we had to cut the gig short in order to reach the second stage before the band over there began playing. Cursing Metaldays’ decision to have the two stages overlap each other, we left another amazing Sabaton concert during the new song Far From The Fame, and we can thus only give you a complete setlist up to that point.
It’s a good thing we had a new Sabaton concert lined up shortly after we returned home from the festival, this made the leaving a little bit easier to bear.

Setlist (incomplete):

The Final Countdown (Europe song)
The March To War
Ghost Division
To Hell And Back
Carolus Rex
Screaming Eagles
Uprising
Soldier Of 3 Armies
Resist And Bite
Attero Dominatus
Poltava
Far From The Fame