### Sabaton, Evil Conspiracy, 2006-10-07

#### 13/10/06 || Lord K Philipson

Once again, the masters of bringing fucken metal to Örebro, Sweden, Club Aska, puts on another show for the thirsty thousands (eh…) of metalheads in our hometown. This time we made sure to bring power metallers Sabaton here, together with local supporters Evil Conspiracy.

The Conspiracy guys are fronted by the vocalist of Memory Garden, a band you should have heard of. He’s got a nice pair of vocal chords, is about 2 feet tall and knows how to execute the most obvious metal moves on stage. Fist in the air, shaved head banging and leather pants on. Dressed for success in that department at least. The music is fine as well, though nothing I’m going to put on the next time I’m in the mood for some Borivoj Krgin love. When I think about it I don’t believe I’m ever in that kinda mood…

I have seen the guys once before and I enjoyed that as well, even if they had to remind me that I had seen them before. Metal through the night on their part and they draw quite some crowd who definitely seemed to enjoy their show. I made sure to watch them from the Aska VIP area while drinking beer and chilling. Evil Conspiracy did all fine though one thing that is very forbidden when it comes to a performance is to have the vocalist lean down to the monitor to check the lyrics placed there while the song is playing… No bonus points for that. Also, we feel a bit bad for the drummer who had to battle a falling cymbal stand during the bigger part of the gig. The fact that none of his bandmates noticed this and helped out is a mystery on par with the Bermuda-triangle. I’ll give them 6/10 anyways.

Sabaton is a completely different story.

These guys know how to put on quite a fucken excellent show. They ooze of power metal and attitude and I took a bigger liking in them live than I would want to confess to. But I have to admit it, no matter how much I despise power metal as a genre… there’s something about those gallopping riffs and arena-choirs that Sabaton use that just works extremely well when it comes to perform your material on stage.

Vocalist Jocke enters with a smile and a pair of Top-Gun sunglasses. That’s one ugly look combined with everyone’s camouflage-pants. But it works. Sure, I laugh at it, but it fucken works. I can’t say that I’m very familiar with the material these guys played since I’m not exactly a collector of Sabaton albums, but to deny the professionalism and attitude (as well as the obvious joy they feel while playing in front of 300 people) these guys possess would be stupid. They know what kind of material to write to make it interesting and catchy.

One of the guys said to us just before they started the show that they were going to start off strong with 3 of their best songs, then play a few more semi-good ones to finish it off with 3 stronger ones again. And that’s exactly what they did. And I liked it quite a bit. Good work guys, we’ll bring you back next year. A well deserved 8 out of fucken 10.

But now to the most important thing… The after party.

You guys who read the last show review knows that we beat Mnemic and M.A.N easy as pie. This was a different story… Most of the Evil Conspiracy guys bailed quite soon but their drummer hung in there until 4 in the morning or so. That’s almost decent, but still not good enough for us. Me and my Aska colleague Fox wanted more. Alot more. The better part of the Sabaton fuckers gave us a good fight until slightly after 4 or so and then bailed…

Except for one fucken guy…

Guitarist Oskar Fucken Montelius. This guy had made a promise to himself to not give up easy and it even came to the point where me and Fox actually discussed the possibility of defeat… But hey, this is where we bring in the lovely drink named Fernet. And as you can see we softened Jakob up a little. But not even that could make the fucken hero go to his hotel and sleep. Oh no, he continued to party with us for a few more hours. At the time when me and Fox were pretty much down and waiting for the bell to count us out, Oskar finally speaks those lovely words… “- Guys, this has been awesome, I’m going back to the hotel now. Thanx alot for a great night!”

VICTORY!!!

Club Aska applauds the Sabaton guys in general and Oskar in particular. We thought you had us, but nope… 9/10 to Oskar. Without a fucken doubt. We need to mention that both me and Fox were suffering from nasty colds. Seriously. At 9 in the morning, me and and Fox decided it was time to go home. We didn’t just win, we won with fucken style.

Club Aska vs The bands: 2-0

In 2 weeks we have Wolf playing. We can announce the 3-0 now already.