Review: Sabaton/Alestorm, O2 Academy

This isn’t supposed to happen. Conventional wisdom insists power metal is an exclusively European phenomenon that British audiences are way too cool to enjoy. What’s more, our armies of humourless, self-appointed arbiters of musical taste form themselves into a Farage-style barrier along the White Cliffs of Dover, zealously turning back anyone found in possession of catchy tunes, huge choruses, traditional heavy metal showmanship and a keen sense of fun. But the Academy is packed to the rafters with drunken punters sporting big cheesy grins as Sabaton wheel out their artillery, while Alestorm respond to their awesome firepower with a giant inflatable duck.

First up are Sabaton’s fellow Swedes Bloodbound. This lot are a heavy metal band who sing many a big dumb heavy metal song about the greatness of heavy metal, rather like Steel Panther’s Death to All But Metal without the smirking. Talk about preaching to the choir. The co-headliners’ props occupy so much space that the six of them are forced to line up along the narrow gap at the front of the stage. Even if the foot-on-the-monitor pose was not their natural posture, they’d be forced into it because they have so little room to move. Priest and Maiden are the touchstones here, with a horned vocalist who even resembles a younger, slimmer Rob Halford. He demands to know how metal we are in Bristol. “Very metal indeed, thanks for asking,” we reply as one, though this actually comes out as a huge, inchoate roar. In the Name of Metal gets the fists punching, while set-closer Nosferatu proves to be their best song. Catch them in a drunken haze at one of those big Euro metalfests and, for an hour or so, you could convince yourself that they’re the greatest band in the world.

The arrival of Alestorm’s duck at centre stage, borne aloft by its own dedicated roadie, gets a bigger cheer than anything played by Bloodbound. How did these (mostly) Scottish pirate metallers get to be so huge? Despite carving themselves such an apparently restrictive niche, the Perth parrot-fanciers  have navigated an almost decade-long career without running out of material. Impressively, they didn’t write a song entitled Walk the Plank until they were four albums in. Even their most enthusiastic fans, of whom there are many, wouldn’t claim that Alestorm are the greatest heavy metal band in the world, but it’s impossible not to admire droll captain Christopher Bowes (who actually lives in Bristol, fact fans) for forging a successful career out of wearing a kilt and playing a keytar in front of a giant inflatable duck.

They kick off with Keelhauled, during which Mate Bodor’s guitar is all but inaudible. But this doesn’t matter to the heaving, pogoing and slam-dancing mass of punters, some of whom have managed to sneak plastic cutlasses and even an inflatable parrot past the Academy’s strict airline security. Heavy on the accordion synth, Alestorm’s heavy metal sea shanties about the joys of grog (Drink, Rum), wenches (Nancy the Tavern Wench), grog and wenches (Wenches and Mead) and, er, time-travelling pirates battling undead squid from outer space (Surf Squid Warfare) are built for loud, mostly inebriated audience participation. “One thing I know about Bristol is that you all love crocodiles,” observes Bowes, correctly, as he introduces Shipwrecked. The only slight quibble is that the songs that spark the biggest singalongs – Nancy… and Drink – are thrown away rather too early in the set. Still, Alestorm get extra points for reworking rapper Taio Cruz’s Hangover as a pirate metal anthem.

The jolly rogering doesn’t stop after they leave the stage. The roadies now face the challenge of removing that duck. Two of them pile on top of it in an urgent attempt at deflation, which actually looks as though they’re performing a vile sex act upon the unfortunate rubbery fowl. When Sabaton’s tank is unveiled, it becomes clear that Alestorm’s duck has been perched atop it for the duration of their set. Yep, that’s right. The Swedes have brought a full-sized tank with a drum kit mounted on top. How metal is that? As single-minded as their touring partners, albeit with rather more material to inspire them, Sabaton’s USP is that they write songs exclusively about military history.

Factor in their matching military fatigues and frontman Joakim Broden’s Till Lindemann-style macho chest-beating and knee-punching and this could all get very pompous very quickly. Fortunately, while their music is deadly serious, the band themselves are not, making self-deprecating cracks about their ‘Ikea tank’ and bizarrely but deliciously throwing in a solo cover of Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life amid all the grim stuff about death and sacrifice. Truth is, they actually go a little too far in this direction, with some painfully scripted banter.

Their songs are suitably stirring and immense, frequently driven by enormous four-part chanted vocals. The intro to the operatic Attero Dominatus (the Battle of Berlin from the Soviet perspective) sounds rather like a power metal Ghost, while To Hell and Back is as bouncy a ditty as one could write about tragic WWII vet Audie Murphy. They slip into their native language for Gott Mit Uns (the 1631 battle of Breitenfeld) but not, disappointingly, Carolus Rex (bellicose Charles XII of Sweden), which Broden precedes, a tad optimistically, with the question: “How much do you guys know about Swedish military history?”

Having romped across Finland, Germany, Sweden, the USA and the Soviet Union (Night Witches, possibly the only song ever written about the all-female Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment), they finally reach Britain for Primo Victoria. “This song is dedicated to your grandfathers, without whom you’d all be speaking German today,” Broden reminds us, sending everybody home sated, bedraggled and, perhaps, better informed.

All pix by Mike Evans