Heaven&Hell @ Sweden Rock Festival, June 6, 2009

Sweden Rock Festival is a 4-day rock festival, held in the south of Sweden, this year from June 3 to June 6. I only went on the last day, to see Heaven&Hell. In fact, this was the first time I was going to see Heaven&Hell/Black Sabbath, so I was quite excited (that's an understatement actually. I was very excited).

Apart from H&H, I saw 5 bands, namely Tank, Impellitteri, Riot, Soilwork, and Europe. I missed Forbidden and Dream Theater, as I was in a queue to have my copy of The Devil You Know signed. Unfortunately, the signing session was first postponed with 1.5 hours, then only Ronnie showed up to sign for (only) a quarter of an hour, so I ended up with my copy of TDYK unautographed and feeling quite cold. In daytime, it had been pretty warm, but in the evening, temperature started to drop rather quickly.
Anyway, 3 quarters before the H&H concert was scheduled to begin, I went towards the stage. I stood on Tony's side of the stage, with only 10, if not less, persons in front of me.

The concert opened of course with E5150, after which Tony, Geezer, Ronnie, and Vinnie walked on stage to play The Mob Rules. I had expected that they would play very loud, but compared to other concerts I have visited, the volume was quite low. Too bad.
They continued with Children of the Sea, then I. During the intro of I, Tony had some problems with feedback or whatever, which made the intro sound really bad, a bit false. In contrast to this false start, the rest of the song was quite impressive. Then followed a new song: Bible Black, which fitted well into the setlist.
Time Machine was better than I thought it would be. I had read some comments on that song, especially on Ronnies voice no longer being able to deal with the song, but at SRF it sounded ok. Time Machine was followed by Vinnies drum solo, which did not really impress me except for Vinnie destroying the skin of one of his drums. This skin was later frisbeed into the public. Must be a cool object to take home. I'm not that enthousiastic about drum solo's anyway, so it may have been a pretty impressive solo. I don't know, but I was happy when the rest of the band came back on stage.
I don't exactly know the sequence of the songs they played after the drum solo, as a few (drunk?) guys behind me started to try and walk to the front row, which was impossible. There were simply too many people in the first few rows. However, they kept trying, which was pretty annoying for most other people, and people started to shout at them. Still they kept trying, but after one of the guys in front of me decided to use his fists, they walked off and did not return. Fortunately.
In the meanwhile, I am quite sure that H&H played Fear. I liked this song on the album, and live it sounded even more powerful. Falling off the Edge of the World was impressive. Then, Follow the Tears was played, my favorite song from TDYK, which was preceded by some (insiders?) jokes from Ronnie about sausages. Follow the Tears was simply great.
Then, the 'best guitar player on the face of the world' (Dio's words) played the solo/intro to Die Young. Then, the band played Heaven&Hell. Of course, the audience was involved at this point, and Iommi played a nice solo. After the solo, the sound tech apparently had found the volume knob, and all of a sudden the volume was as high as I had hoped on forehand. The part with the 'fire' and smoke coming from the plastic dragons which stood like quards on both sides of the stage was cool to see.

After H&H, the band went offstage, but of course they came back to play some more (surprise!).
I really enjoyed the 'Tony Iommi surprise song, which is the same every evening' (again, Ronnie's words), Country Girl. This song was one of the surprises of the gig, or rather, of the tour. I hadn't thought they would include this song in the setlist. A pity that they only played half of it, before Neon Knights. And that was my first Black Sabbath concert.

I really enjoyed the concert (understatement). Tony walked around the stage, smiling every now and then, whilst I thought he would be 'glued' on the stage, standing just in front of his amps. Ronnie's voice does not sound as impressive as on earlier tours with Black Sabbath, but given his age he did an impressive job. In my opinion, he is still one of the best singers in the hardrock/heavy metal world. Geezer was just playing bass, and Vinnie was hidden behind his kit.

Admittedly, there are some points of critique, like the volume and the bad animations and screens saver-like projections on the screen in the backdrop. Furthermore, the setlist was not too surprising. But, on the other hand, if they dropped songs from the setlist, I would have complained that they did not play some of their classic songs.
All in all, it was a good to very good concert. If I had to give a mark, I'd say 8 out of 10.

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