Saturday at Tons of Rock came with sun and no rain, but the wind had picked up. The bad thing about this was that the festival had to close down the Huth stage on the highest  point of the fortress. They took no chance of the stage falling over in the wind. With a tight schedule on three stages, this meant an even tighter one on the tent stage. (Photo above: Satyricon)

Two of the bands, Føss and Sibiir and  were unfortunately cancelled, but the rest of the bands got to play. Personally I had to prioritize the main stage because of some other duties, but I got to see one of the bands at the tent stage, too.

My first band Saturday was Black Star Riders, an American band formed by members of Thin Lizzy after the band broke up. Their music follows in the Thin Lizzy tradition, and they also plays covers of there old band. A good way to start the day.

After Black Star Riders I went down to the Tent stage to see Delain, a Dutch symphonic metal band, formed by the keyboardist of Within Temptation in 2002. With their female singer and guitarist, the band was a refreshing change of style from many of the other rather male oriented bands at the festival.

The next band on the main stage, Airbourne, is Australian. If I hadn’t seen them, I would have thought they were AC/DC. At least they sounded like them, and they were really fun on stage. Singer and guitarist Joel O’Keefe is energetically running around on stage while playing. Airbourne is a great party band and perfect for the afternoon gig.

One of my absolute favorite metal bands is Satyricon. They have been playing together for 26 years and are still one of the best live bands around, plus they have developed their music in a way that to me makes them just as interesting today as before. AT Tons of Rock, the band had a new guitarist, who fit in perfectly with the rest of the band, making them sund as hard and precise as we are used to.

This was the first time I have seen Five Finger Death Punch live. They were possibly the commercially most successful of the bands playing at Tons of Rock this year. They are a good live band, and their new singer fit in well, even if he was a bit out of tune during the song Wrong Side of Heaven. They ended the set with House of the Rising Sun, a version obviously inspired by the version of Frijid Pink from 1970.

Sabaton was one of the headliners at the first Tons of Rock in 2014, where they had one of the more impressive stage sets and pyro shows I have seen, with a tank on stage with pyro shooting during the whole concert. This year the tank stayed home, and they projected idyllic movies on a gigantic screen instead. They still had flames, but not as impressive as three years ago. The concert was centered around their album Carolus Rex from 2012, about the Swedish King Charles XII who was killed at the Fredriksten fortress in 1718. An appropriate closing of Tons of Rock 2017.

All photos are © Per Ole Hagen and must not be used without written permission.