{"id":3934,"date":"2017-02-04T22:25:55","date_gmt":"2017-02-04T21:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/?p=3934"},"modified":"2017-09-24T22:40:17","modified_gmt":"2017-09-24T20:40:17","slug":"sabaton-at-afas-live-sunday-29-january-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2017\/02\/04\/sabaton-at-afas-live-sunday-29-january-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Sabaton at AFAS Live, Sunday 29 January 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Just as I don’t go to many hip-hop gigs<\/a>, I don’t go to many metal gigs, either. In fact…I can’t think of any. The closest I’ve got to metal is Rush, and which is hard rock, but not metal. So I wasn’t really sure what to expect at a Sabaton<\/a> gig, other than some very loud music about war and heroic violence. Fiona is into them, and had played me some of their songs, but my response is kinda “meh”.<\/p>\n

Since we were last there to see The Lumineers in November<\/a>, the Heineken Music Hall has rebranded itself as AFAS Live<\/a> (sponsored by AFAS software<\/a>). The vibe around the venue was excellent, and the merch stand had more T-shirts than you could shake a stick at. I wonder if this is a cultural thing for metal concerts? I’d say that about half of the people in the audience were wearing Sabaton gear of some kind \u2014 a far greater percentage of people than I normally see wearing a band’s merch. I suggested that Fiona should have been wearing her black lipstick, and she rolled her eyes at me.<\/p>\n

I’ve taken Fiona to a few concerts over the last couple of years, but this was the first time I felt felt like a stereotypical Concert Dad<\/a>. The mood in the crowd was happy, but I felt cautious about being too close to the front and centre in case we got caught in a mosh. I tensed up whenever a half-empty plastic beer cup would fly overhead and shower us with malty rain. I don’t think Fiona felt entirely at ease, either.<\/p>\n

The first opening act, Twilight Force<\/a> was an over-the-top power-metal excursion into epic fantasy, and we both loved them. The second opener was Accept<\/a>, who played for a whole hour. We left the hall after a few songs, though, because they were really<\/em> loud and also kinda boring. By the time Sabaton finally came on at 21:30, we had already been standing around for about two and a half hours, and we were starting to feel tired. (Again, is this a metal thing, having multiple warm-up acts that play really long sets?) We listened for an hour, but left before the end. Fiona was exhausted, as was I. This was one of the loudest gigs I have ever been to. Even without standing directly in front of a speaker stack, and even though we were both wearing ear plugs, my ears were gummy and ringing as we left the venue.<\/p>\n

One advantage of leaving early is that we had no delay in exiting the car park under the Arena<\/a>, which is usually a massive bottleneck.<\/p>\n

Overall: I think they put on a great show. The set dressing was amazing, and the band were having tons of fun romping around on stage and feeding off the energy of the adoring crowd. I don’t think I would go again, because their actual music still leaves me cold. But if you enjoy Sabaton, I’m sure you would love seeing them live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just as I don’t go to many hip-hop gigs, I don’t go to many metal gigs, either. In fact…I can’t think of any. The closest I’ve got to metal is Rush, and which is hard rock, but not metal. So I wasn’t really sure what to expect at a Sabaton gig, other than some very … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Sabaton at AFAS Live, Sunday 29 January 2017”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1818],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-concerts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3934"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3938,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3934\/revisions\/3938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}