Historical-and weather conditions

The name ‘Borgholm Brinner’ (‘Borgholm Burns’ or writers translation ‘Borgholm In Flames)’ of the premiere festival on 27-28 July, 2018, hosted by In Flames is, of course, highly appropriate and the band list gave hope for some really hot atmosphere.

Borgholm Castle, one of the regions’s greatest tourist attraction, opened up its gates for some good music and the death metal pioneers from Gothenburg, In Flames, acted gate-and key masters for their first own festival over two days. King Karl X Gustav built it in the mid 17th century and is the only king who lived at the castle for a longer period of time. 1806 the castle was destroyed by a fire and today only limestone walls are left, but attracts tourists and is at times opened up for concerts, which many are classics in Swedish live music (source, and pls, see more at http://www.borgholmsslott.se).

A fantastic place for some heavy music and we can already here, mark it as a top arrangement, which creates hopes for a new festival in 2019 and years to come! The tropical heat which has hit Sweden this summer put some extra demands on the arrangement when it came to cooking of food, water availability and usage of more technical visual effects on stage instead of fire and fire works! It was all very adapted to the circumstances and great many thanks to In Flames for making this weekend in late July very memorable.

The Bands

In Flames (hosts and headline both evenings) (SE), Refused (SE), Raised Fist (SE), Graveyard (SE), Danko Jones (CA), Satyricon (NO), Dark Tranquility (SE), Come Back Kid (CA) and Tribulation (SE).

Danko Jones (CA)

A very welcome return by this Canadian 3 man band. Danko Jones is earlier covered by metalsouth from their Helsingborg gigs at the Tivoli. Danko Jones still writes highly appreciated chronicles in Close-Up magazine every month. All 10 album releases over the years are with the Swedish record label Bad Taste Records (Lund, in the centre of the metalsouth region). As usual Danko Jones speaks with the audience rather aggressively between the songs. It’s fun to listen to and gives a good spice to the already great performance. Danko Jones e.g. labelled this first day of the festival ‘the Swedish-Canadian Day’ since all bands were from these 2 countries. The first Canadian  band performing on the Friday was Come Back Kid.

Dark Tranquility (SE)

Another Swedish Band invited by In Flames, which meets the highest wishes for a band list of us at metalsouth. This band has also been covered and their performance this warm and sunny day brings back good memories from KB, Malmö. Like In Flames this band started its career in Gothenburg in 1989. The 1990’s was the decade when Swedish metal bands developed into world class and In Flames, Dark Tranquility and At the Gates, all from Gohenburg and representing what is called ‘the Gothenburg sound’ within the death metal genre. At The Gates would be a great candidate for next years festival, which is highly hoped for!

Raised Fist (SE)

With Raised Fist the temperature raised by the sun setting over Borgholm Castle. The band was formed in Luleå 1993. Alexander Hagman, singer, made no one disappointed in an, as alway, super energetic stage performance. One great story was when he talked to the, by this hour, ca. 4 000 person audience and asked the guy who earlier wanted a selfie with him and asked kindly if this could be done after the gig below the stage at the In Flames Gin tasting queue. When we were standing in the same line for almost 30 minutes (the gin was great!!) Alexander showed up and the guy waiting got his selfie…and quite a few more took the opportunity!!

In Flames (SE) concludes the first day!

The host of the festival needs no further introduction. A few days before the festival it was announced that ticket holders were welcome to a small club in Kalmar to warm up with some good music. The rumour spread that it may be In Flames themselves, which was true and ca. 300 could see the band warm up before the festival, and say no more…we wish we would have been there to make this festival experience complete! Congratulations to those who were!!  Expected and normal fire and fire works at an In Flames gig was not possible due to the tropical heat and drought that Sweden has experienced this summer. This put extra demands on their performance. Spectacular graphical-and digitally mastered effects replaced fire in a quite good manner. It would be interesting to know which was cheaper costwise! A really good show with new and old material, which rendered high marks (4 out of 5) in Swedish press the next morning.

Please, be patient for material from the 2nd day…’In Flames with Saturday Guests’!

(sources of information: thanks to Wikipedia and Metal-Archives.com for being there.)