Facts:
Takes place June 7–10 in Norway outside Sölvesborg.
92 bands play, including Mötley Crüe, Ghost, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Pantera, Europe, Def Leppard, Monster Magnet, Skid Row and Gojira.
The festival is sold out and usually attracts around 35,000 visitors per day.
The seed for Sweden Rock was sown in 1992, when the Summer Festival in Olofström started. The following year, the festival moved to Karlshamn, and changed its name to Karlshamn Rock Festival. In 1998 the festival moved to Sölvesborg municipality, and the following year the festival changed its name to Sweden Rock Festival.
— Openness is required for people to embrace these younger bands in the same way as the bands you discovered in your childhood. The quality is there and is often higher than on the main stage.
Sweden Rock is one of the few Swedish festivals that has survived festival death. This is despite the fact that the bookings rarely surprise – but on the contrary can be experienced as being similar year after year.
“Nostalgia Festival”
Sofia Bergström writes about rock and metal for Aftonbladet. This will be the thirteenth time she visits Sweden Rock – and it is a large part of the audience that returns year after year.
— Sweden Rock is a nostalgia festival. The average age of the visitors is high, 39 years. At the same time, it is a target group with strong purchasing power that makes the festival go around. You can afford the tickets and buy food and drink on the spot, while being loyal to your favorite bands.
New blood
The question is how Sweden Rock will deal with the generational change that will happen in the future, when older bands retire and it is starting to be time for new blood in the genre.
— The quality is there, clearly. But it depends on the hard rock audience being as loyal to them as they have been to their old idols. One of the bands playing is French Gojira. They are absolutely fantastic and could very well be headline names at the festival in a few years. Then we also have Ghost, who are super big now and have been around for over ten years.
TT: Which gigs are you most looking forward to at the festival?
— I absolutely do not want to miss Children of the Sün from Arvika. Then Blues Pills, one of Sweden’s best live bands. And a Belgian band called Brutus, they’re absolutely amazing. They all play on the smaller stages where there is more variety and better gender distribution.
The fact that such a large part of the line-up is “nostalgia bands”, which mostly live on old merits, can have its advantages – but also disadvantages, says Sofia Bergström.
— Some maintain good quality, others do not. I’m a little nervous about the Mötley Crüe gig, for example. It’s a risky booking, they’re still living in the 1980s, you might say. I hope I will be pleasantly surprised.