SABATON at Wembley Arena - The Tour To End All Tours
The front of Wembley Arena
On Saturday, the 15th of April, the boys and I went up to London to watch Sabaton in concert, our very first time seeing them perform live.
This concert was originally supposed to be in May 2022, but with all the uncertainty around governments decisions/indecisions to do with lockdowns, the tour was postponed.
The name of their tour – ‘The Tour To End All Tours’ – is a play on their latest album, ‘The War to End All Wars’.
The 2 opening acts were Lordi, a Finnish metal band, and one of Gordon’s favourites; he was beside himself at the chance to see them live!
And the other act was a Japanese metal band called Babymetal, made up of 3 female singers/dancers; I guess the best way to describe their sound is a fusion of metal and J-pop, and they are very energetic, and very popular!
The concert was sold out, and we had pretty good seats with good views of all the bands.
Sabaton’s sold out dates
Sabaton are an amazing band to see live.
Sabaton on stage at Wembley Arena
Sabaton at Wembley
For starters, they have a tank on stage, complete with pyrotechnics!
And some of the songs have extra elements; for ‘Attack of the Dead Men’, there was smoke lit by greenish lights replicating a gas attack with the band wearing gas masks.
For a metal band, all 5 of them come across as really nice guys, genuinely appreciative of the audience, and I don’t mean to imply that other metal bands don’t, but there’s hardly any ‘bad’ language or questionable behaviour.
I’d have liked to have taken more photos, but my sad little phone camera wasn’t up to the task.
Halfway through, the bassist, Pär Sundström, alone on stage, had a chat with us, talking of when Sabaton first played in the UK to a ‘crowd’ of about 90, if I remember correctly, and how that number has gradually grown to that evening’s sell-out crowd at Wembley of over 12,000.
He then asked us to take out our phones and turn the torches on, which was quite a sight, and when we started chanting, ‘Sabaton’, he seemed genuinely taken aback and touched.
Pär Sundström facing the crowd with phones lit up (Sabaton’s Twitter page)
As much as we enjoy all their songs, each of us were especially pleased when they performed particular favourites – ‘Bismarck’ for Gordon, ‘To Hell and Back’ for Liam, and ‘The Winged Hussars’ for me.
They also performed ‘Christmas Truce’, and their latest ‘1916’, both very poignant.
I’ve already decided, next time Sabaton are on tour and in London, I’m going.
This article in ‘Metal Talk’ has great photos of the band and the effects.