Blog Post
Sabaton 'The Tour to End All Tours' - Vue Cinema, Edinburgh 12th October 2024
Reviewed by Iain McArthur • 12 October 2024
Movie Review
Sabaton are so much more than just a bog-standard heavy metal band. As well as being talented musicians, military historians and homo-erotic camouflage fetish models, they also arrange cruises and festivals under their own banner, and now they seem to have set their sights on winning Sweden’s equivalent of a BAFTA. By the end of October, their ‘Tour to End All Tours’ film will have been launched in over 650 different cinemas in 28 countries, less than a year after we reviewed their animated ‘War to End All Wars’ movie which premiered in military museums around the world. With the European and Australia / New Zealand salvo complete, fans in the USA and Canada will still have a chance to view the film as part of a big screen experience at the end of this month and I suspect that the film might be available on DVD by the time Santa comes to check his naughty and nice lists.
This movie captures an Amsterdam performance from the ‘The Tour..’ in November 2023 and fans who enjoyed that experience will love reliving it while those of us who gave it a miss will be left shaking our heads and wondering ‘what the f*ck was I thinking?’ Gary: Tank Commander’s favourite band pulled out all the big guns for that career-defining world trip with an epic all-encompassing stage show and every bomb, tank blast and bloody barrage has been captured in full for this film along with copious crowd shots to give a fully immersive experience. God knows how many cameras were used to produce this movie but every conceivable angle is covered with many close-ups and band’s-eye views plus long shots to capture the scale of the event. On-stage chat reveals that the band played their first show in the Netherlands to a crowd of 15 but there were more than 15,000 in the Ziggo Dome on this night to salute the band’s endurance, hard work and quality.
The actual concert event itself must have been stunning with a bombastic set capturing new songs and old favourites like ‘Carolus Rex’ (in Swedish) and a pantomime-style crowd scream off during ‘Swedish Pagans’. The band were on great form throughout and play their parts magnificently, alongside backdrop footage and actors performing various roles. The tank drum riser is one of many impressive set-pieces, only veering slightly into Spinal Tap territory with the wee Red Baron-themed keyboard, but the on-stage armaments are impressive and the gas effect in ‘The Attack of the Dead Men’ is especially effective with masks distributed to the front rows.
It is still a strange experience to watch a gig in a cinema but, like my previous experience with Metallica’s S&M2, there is something magical about watching on the big screen with surround sound in comparison to my own modest man cave at home. Despite reclining in a faux-leather armchair with a table for the Maltesers and a slot for my cider, I still felt the urge to bang my head, pump my fist and shout “hey” a lot but it wasn’t that sort of crowd and I would have to say that this is the level of luxury I would be expecting if I did sell a kidney to buy a ticket for Billy Joel or Oasis but dream on.
The filming and recording of concerts have come such a long way in recent years and the quality of the film production here is hugely impressive – it really is movie standard. I thoroughly enjoyed the cinema experience and you have to hope that it will come out on DVD so that more folks can enjoy it; an LP is already available. I will certainly be doing my very best to be good for the rest of the year in the hope that the DVD will be available by then and that maybe Santa will give me one. 😊
