If any band could bring back the Great Power Era of Sweden, or in fact even conceive of the attempt to do so, it would certainly be Sabaton, and that was exactly what they were up on their Swedish Empire tour, following the release of Carolus Rex.

As in any great battle, you send in the cannon fodder first, this time in the form of Wisdom and Eluveitie, and as they had done their bit it was now time for the heavy artillery with Sabaton themselves taking the frontline.
What struck me as odd though, was that the cannon fodder, namely Eluveitie, had taken some of the Danish troops with them as they went off, leaving the battlefield of Amager Bio clearly less populated now that it was time for the final stand. Well, their loss I suppose...
To make it clear without a doubt which country led the attack, an intro was heard in the one song that is possibly more representative of Sweden than the national anthem itself – Europe’s The Final Countdown.
Then of course came The March To War in which the members of the band took their positions so that they were ready to strike hard and fast with the first song of the night, Ghost Division.

“We were proud to have sold 666 tickets in pre-sales, so we’ll have to ask anyone who paid at the door to leave.”
- Joakim Brodén (vocals)

It was clearly a rested and enthusiastic band that was performing for us tonight, not the road-weary and worn fighters you might expect in a band which had begun this tour on another continent more than six months ago.
Joakim Brodén and Pär Sundström were lively and all over the stage as always, and this is of course always good but not very surprising. No, what made me even happier was to see the new guys, guitarists Thorbjörn 'Thobbe' Englund and Christoffer Rörland, and drummer 'Robban' Bäck, being much more comfortable in their roles as part of this war machine. They seemed more relaxed and had more fun between themselves and with the audience, and this really brought up the overall quality, especially compared to the lacking effort when we saw them at Metalcamp in the summer.
On a side-note, it was fun to see the army suits worn by the band being complimented by a pair of Vibram FiveFingers on Brodén, and Bäck taking it the only step further from that which is possible by playing completely barefoot!
Getting back to more relevant things though, the next song up was Gott Mit Uns, and understandably Sabaton had no chance of bringing Peter Tägtgren along for the entire tour, so once again it was up to Englund and Rörland to take turns in filling in for him, and also in this they did considerably a lot better than the last time around.

Later in the set we would encounter several more special little quirks which added on to the fun – three times around, Brodén would ask us, the audience, to choose the next song for instance. To simplify, we were given a few choices, and the one which got the loudest shouts would be the one played. First up was a fight between White Death and Talvisota, where White Death came out on top; the second bout was a three-way match between Coat Of Arms songs, the title track, Uprising and Midway. Although I personally would have had it another way, it was Coat Of Arms that won in the end. It’s not a bad track, but I prefer the other two.
The last time we were given the power to influence the setlist, it was once again between two songs, but Brodén made a small mistake and announced the wrong title for one of them, something he quickly noticed due to the response from the audience and corrected himself accordingly. The fight was meant to be between Into The Fire and Attero Dominatus, but instead of Into The Fire he made a slip of the tongue and said Primo Victoria. After the correction Attero Dominatus was chosen the winner, but you can guess what happened before the contestants were rightly introduced...
One other fun part came at the beginning of The Hammer Has Fallen, where a keyboard had been placed centre-stage for Brodén, and an acoustic guitar had been given to Englund; you see, Brodén didn’t start the song right away, but rather shouted that he wanted us to jump for him, after which he began playing Van Halen’s Jump. A short way in, he changed the direction by asking if we wanted to hear ABBA instead, a question which was answered by a resounding shout from the audience. This obviously put Brodén in an awkward position, as he mentioned we were supposed to say no, but he manned up and played us a bit of ABBA as well before moving on to the actual song...

“There’s a lot of fucked up history between Sweden and Denmark, and the one who fucked it up the most was Carolus Rex!”
- Brodén (vocals)

So far I’ve mostly covered the movements of the Swedish troops, but what about the Danish line of defence then?
Well, to begin with I should mention that Brodén said how happy he and the rest of the band was to back here, reminiscing both on the last time, where the Danes broke down the security fence so the concert had to be put on hold, and even remembering good times at the now closed down The Rock!
The Danes weren’t quite up to the task of breaking any lines of defence this time around, or maybe Amager Bio had just learnt from past mistakes and improved their equipment. Either way, the red and white’s were not giving up without a fight, that much was for sure!
It didn’t take long before a loud sing-along began (already in the first track actually), and come Gott Mit Uns people were warmed up and jumping enthusiastically! Apart from the general headbanging and arm-waving, we also saw some crowd-surfers float by from time to time, something that did not seem to please the guards but the band surely didn’t mind!

All in all, it was a warm and sweaty battle which was fought at Amager Bio this evening, a battle which in my opinion had no losers.
I still couldn’t quite grasp how some people could chose to leave before Sabaton’s show, and had I had my way, all of the songs taken from Carolus Rex would have been sung in Swedish, not just Karolinens Bön, but these small scratches in the camouflage paint meant nothing to the unstoppable tank that was Sabaton this evening. Surely a show to be remembered through ages to come!

Setlist:

The March To War
Ghost Division
Gott Mit Uns
Poltava
White Death
Carolus Rex
Karolinens Bön
40:1
Cliffs Of Gallipoli
Coat Of Arms
Dominium Maris Baltici
The Lion From The North
The Hammer Has Fallen
Attero Dominatus
The Art Of War
Primo Victoria
Metal Crüe