It’s not often that Royal Hunt plays in Sweden, and even more rare to see them play close to us in the southern part of Sweden. Cloudscape is perhaps the band that I have seen the most concerts with through the years. I’ve followed them since before they became Cloudscape and have known the founding members for a long time, me and guitarist Patrik Svärd goes back 20 years now.
I met up with fellow colleague and close friend, Mr.Nylén, and we grabbed a bite before arriving at the venue,The Tivoli in Helsingborg. As usual we met a few friends, as we normally do.

This was the first concert of the duos about 3 week long tour. The Tivoli has a rather small stage, which makes it hard for the bands to move around as they like.

About 20 minutes late, Cloudscape entered the stage. The first song (Mind Diary) had a little soundproblem, merely the microphone were to low, this were fixed when the second song were played. Kingdom Of Sandand Before Your Eyes are obvious choices in a setlist, but the fourth song were a brand new one. A New Design are included in the limited edition cd that the band sells at the concert. Personally, this song is great. one of the best songs from the band and hopefully a mainstay at future concerts. Eyes Of Jealousy isn’t one of my favourite songs from the band but nevertheless a good song. Demon Tears were played next. SingerMike Andersson dedicated this song to Andy Pierce, singer in Nasty Idols, who passed away a short time ago. The last song of the rather short 45 minute set were Under Fire, one of the bands main songs from the debute records.

All in all it was a good Cloudscape-concert. Not the best I’ve seen with them but not the worst either. A good days work from the boys, as usual.

Royal Hunt isn’t a band that I collect records of, I only have a couple of them. I know though that they are considered as a very good live band with a great singer in D.C. Cooper, who has returned to the band, and their DVD released 8 years ago are really great. So when the chance to see them in my home town popped up, there wasn’t a slight hesitation really. Even more so because I missed them at Firefest in 2012.

The band got on stage about 9.30 pm and started with Double Conversations and followed it up with One Minute Left To Live, the latter from the latest record. The brilliant The Mission was up next, a song that DC Cooper didn’t sang on record. In fact there were more of them (Clown In The Mirror, Running Wild, Epilogueand Cold City Lights), more than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise. The best part of the concert were the last third (not including the encore), when the band played Time, Clown In The Mirror, Half Past Loneliness, the brilliant Last Goodbye and Message to G-D. The encore’s were Hell Comes Down From Heaven (from the latest record), an instrumental mix (which they could’ve replaced with a real song in my opinion) and Epilogue. 3 songs from the new record is actually a number that I think is perfect, for any band. Not too many and not too few either (still plenty of room for the older songs), so a great choice there, and I think the choices of songs from it also were spot on. There were actually songs from most of the studiorecords the band has released, except from the 2 Mark Boals-records in 2008 and 2010. So very well spread and good choices of songs.

Hard hitting drummer Allan Sorensen seemed to have fun and did a great job behind the drums, mastermind Andre Andersen laughed throughout the concert and also seemed to be very comfortable. Young guitarist Jonas Larsen and bassist Andreas Passmark were flawless. The one thing that impress me the most though were DC Cooper. He’s not the type of singer that impress me more than any other on record, but live it’s another thing. He’s one of the very few singers that actually sings better live than on record, it was fantastic to hear the man sing, absolutely brilliant job!
Royal Hunt released their first record 1993, that’s 21 years ago, hopefully they continue to deliver, they are a great live band to say the least.

Setlist:
Double Conversion, One Minute Left To Live, The Mission, Tearing Down The World, Hard Rain’s Coming, Running Wild, A Life To Die For, Cold City Lights, Time, Clown In The Mirror, Half Past Loneliness, Last Goodbye, Message To G-D
Encore: Hell Comes Down From Heaven, Instrumental Mix, Epilogue