Sabaton was at our first festival of the summer and the last. They had completely blown me away at Copenhell, and now I was curious to see if they had it in them to pull off yet another one of those outstanding gigs…

”Prost meine liebe freunde!”
- Joakim Brodén (vocals)

If the intensity in the crowd was any kind of compass, I’d say they were off to an incredibly good start – already during Wackens slot machine intro (they have a short video of a slot machine with band names on the reels introducing each act a short time before the gig) there was a good pressure on the large crowd in front of the True Metal Stage and loud cheers were already rising from several parts of the throng.
This certainly did not diminish but rather gained in intensity as the bands own double intro (The Final Countdown/The March To War) came on and Snowy Shaw entered the stage, waving as he took his place behind the drums. There was no little camera attached to him this day, but I suspected this would have little to no influence on the playing as such.
The rest of the band soon followed to yet another increase in the volume of the crowd, but we were finally deafened out as sparklers shot up all over and the band kicked off Ghost Division with a blast! It may have a few years on it by now, but it is still one of the best damn openers one can have, and I can totally understand why Sabaton keeps this in the start of the set like this.

“Find a Swede in the crowd and make him translate this for you!”
- Brodén (vocals)

The rest of the set was marked by a not short but still limited time on the stage, and thus concentrated on the well-known hits and a trio of songs from the latest album, only one of which were sung in Swedish (I would have loved to have them all like this, but I understand such an international crowd as Wacken might have a problem with it). All in all, no surprises except possibly for Swedish Pagans but certainly no low-points either.
This same sentence could give a rather good description of the performance of the band as well – they came on hard, had a bit of a weak point in energy in the middle of the set only to pull it together in a great way towards the end again. The moves were run of the mill for this band, always entertaining, but nothing we haven’t seen them do so many times before. Oh, and the Swedish Pagans remark should be exchanged with the part of the show where Brodén said that he’d like to change his vest with someone in the crowd. Amazingly, this wasn’t just an empty comment but it actually happened – some kid crowd-surfed up to the stage, wearing a similar vest to Brodéns, and they made a quick change before the guards kindly escorted him out of the security pit! Cool trick, but not one I’d like to see used again in the future as it works better as a once in a lifetime opportunity...

“Wacken, my friends, I have no fucking idea what to say right now...”
- Brodén (vocals)

Something that certainly is not a once in a lifetime opportunity, is to shout “noch ein bier!” during a Sabaton concert, something the crowd proved well beyond any doubt this day! Brodén accepted the challenge early on, but that didn’t stop anyone from demanding another, and another. And another...
Brodén kept it relatively clean however (is he getting weak in his old days?) and gently dismissed the loud requests by saying that if he took any more in, he would get stark naked, and nobody would be interested in that happening. Even though protests to this statement were made, I for one was happy to see that the frontman stayed completely dressed throughout the remainder of the gig.

If Copenhell had been a bare to the bone kind of concert, Wacken saw Sabaton in all their fiery splendour!
The ammunition was not saved when delivering this gig, and we had sparklers and shots of flame spurting out all over the place, extra drum rolls from Shaw, and your average larger than life performance by the band.
In the end though, none of this mattered. Copenhell had been really intense and had blown me away, Wacken was just a highly entertaining standard gig from the Swedish military orchestra.

Setlist:

The Final Countdown (Europe song)
The March To War
Ghost Division
Gott Mit Uns
Carolus Rex
Into The Fire
Karolinens Bön
Swedish Pagans
Midway
Cliffs Of Gallipoli
Sun Tzu Says
The Art Of War
Primo Victoria
Metal Crüe