While most of Södermalm was thrust into darkness during a lengthy power cut last Monday, just south of that part of town Halestorm brought their electrifying live presence to Fållan and showed they truly are a force of nature to be reckoned with.
Halestorm is more than just your regular rock band, they are like a storm front that rolls into town, shakes the ground below us and leaves the audience grinning in the wreckage.
The band band was formed by sister and brother duo Lzzy and Arejay Hale already back in 1997, when they were in their early teens, but their full-length debut album came in 2009. Rounded out by Joe Hottinger on the guitar and Josh Smith on the bass, the Grammy-winning quartet are built on true musicianship and a live energy that is something out of the ordinary.
The natural spotlight falls on Lzzy as the frontwoman. Her powerhouse vocals hit like lightning bolts, and she can go from sultry whispers to heavy metal screams that could wake the dead. She truly commands the stage like a demigoddess.
During the show Lzzy was reminiscing about their first show in Stockholm at Hovet back in 2010, which also took me down memory lane to my first times seeing the band in 2012 at Debaser Slussen and 2014 at Debaser Medis. Kinda makes you realize how much time has passed, when those sorely missed legendary Stockholm venues are no more.
The band evidently switches up the setlist every night, which I’m sure keeps things interesting for the band as well as the fans.Their latest and very acclaimed album Everest was strongly represented with 8 songs on the setlist, as this tour is dubbed Neverest, but we also got plenty of old sing-along and wave-those-horns kind of favorites like Freak Like Me, I Miss the Misery and Love Bites (So Do I), a triple threat that ended the main part of the set.
And they had obviously saved Here’s to Us and Rock Show for the encore, which is pretty much where those songs ought to be, as they are getting the people truly in that spirit of being right where they belong: at the rock show, with fellow freaks, preferrably in the front row.
All photos © Nina Uddin
