It’s almost déjà vu. A year ago to the day (the day of the concert, not the day of writing) I was seeing Iron Maiden for the first time as they played the opening date of their Australian tour in Perth. Today I am watching Sabaton for the first time, opening their own Australian tour in Perth. But this time it was a little different, because this was also Sabaton’s first time ever playing in Perth.

But first, I’ll briefly give some words on the support band. Preceding Sabton onstage was Amaranthe, a band of which I knew nothing save for them being Swedish and having three singers. I enjoyed their set, and definitely want to listen to them again, if only someone could upload what the setlist was so I know which songs to listen to.

Having spent a lot of the evening standing by the time Amaranthe were done, my legs were quite sore and so I took the break between bands to rest them. But I don’t know how they survived Sabaton, because I was thumping along to just about every song.

And what a reception they got. The band were on fire right out of the gate, intense and electric as singer Joakim Brodén delivered a powerful performance in strong voice. After kicking off the show with classic opener “Ghost Division”, and immediately following it with a very welcome “The Last Stand”, Joakim told us that it’s rare for them to receive such a welcome the first time they play a new city. Later he went on to say he can count on one hand how many times the band had such a reception as this on a Monday night.

Without further ado, three songs from The Great War were up next. These were actually new to me as that album is the only one I don’t have. All were good, but I liked “The Red Baron” a little more than “Great War”. “Fields of Verdun” will probably need another listen or two. This trio was followed up with a really cool one, non-album track “Bismark”, about the famed battleship. I love it when bands play songs like these.

The action stopped briefly now for Joakim to don his pink Hello Kitty guitar in a humourous exchange between him and guitarist Thobbe Englund. This involved Joakim playing through a few famour riffs (“Beat It” and “Smoke on the Water” were two I recognised).

Alas I have no pictures or video of this moment because I was too engaged with it to think to get my phone out. Oops. But we all knew what this meant. Only one song features Joakim on guitar, and that is the singalong “Resist and Bite” from Heroes. And I’ll never say no to anything from Heroes.

After that we got our first song from their second WWI album, The War To End All Wars, with a very inspired pick in the awesome “Soldier of Heaven”. One of my favourite songs from that album, it was a blast to hear it live.

But then it was time for the real treat. As Joakim said earlier, they couldn’t really do a Legends-oriented setlist as the album wasn’t out yet, but they could sneak on of the singles in. That single was my favourite of the four songs they released ahead of time, the mighty “Hordes of Khan”. And let me tell you, it sounded great live.

The band then returned to The Great War with “Attack of the Dead Men”, and here lies my one trifle with the setlist. With four songs from The Great War, there were a couple older tunes they could have played instead but got pushed out. For a ‘catching Perth up on the band’s history’ setlist, I think it fell ever so slightly short, especially with albums like Attero Dominatus and Coat of Arms not contributing any songs.

But we did get to hear a good bunch of classic Sabaton as the set went on. After getting permission from the crowd to sing one in Swedish, the band treated us to a crushingly heavy rendition of “Carolus Rex”, with more heavy-weights on the horizon.

But first, drummer Hannes Van Dahl interrupted one of Joakim’s speeches to say Joakim talks too much, and he was tired of the, as he put it, ‘ballads’ Joakim liked to sing. He then announced to play something fast and heavy metal.

This sent warning bells off in my head. I was scared they were going to play “Screaming Eagles” next, as it was introduced as ‘something hard and fast’ on the Heroes on Tour DVD. And I don’t like “Screaming Eagles” anywhere near as much as most of their other songs.

Hannes introduced the song’s name.

‘This is S…’

I hear that the song starts with S. Internal monologue is going ‘Oh no oh no oh no’

Hannes finishes the word ‘…tormtroopers’

My fist instinctively goes in the air. “Stormtroopers” is another one of my favourite songs on The War To End All Wars. “Christmas Truce”, the next song, is less so, but I wasn’t about to complain right after getting “Stormtroopers” instead of “Screaming Eagles”.

From here on out, it’s all crowd-pleasers. “Night Witches” into “The Art of War” comes first. Both songs were easy shoo-ins for setlist guessers, and they both rock.

But now, finally, it was the moment I’d been waiting for all show. The one song that I just had to hear tonight. “Cliffs of Gallipoli”. And biased as I may be, I think this is the best version of the song I’ve ever heard. The back half was one of two moments I recorded from the night, and please excuse the shoddy camera work, I was too busy rocking out to Sabaton to care about a shaky camera.

At this point Joakim told us that normally they’d go backstage and pretend the show was over, and then ‘surprise’ us with more songs. Except this time he said they weren’t going to bother with that, and launched straight into stone-cold classic “Primo Victoria”. And you bet we were all jumping along to it.

Two more classics, “Swedish Pagans” and “To Hell And Back”, closed out the show, both rendered spectacularly. The traditional closer of the past 20 years, “Metal Crüe was conspicuously absent, but it’s not a huge deal to me. It’s been on enough live albums by this point.

But to sum it all up, Sabaton were phenomenal, no two ways about it. Joakim said they’ll be back again, to rapturous applause. I can’t wait. Bring on the Legends tour.

And to top it all off, one of my friends that I went with passed on a duplicate copy of Coat of Arms he had to me.

Concerts don’t come much better than this. Yeah I would have loved to hear “Attero Dominatus”, but I got to witness “Cliffs of Gallipoli” live, and that makes up for that.