Sabaton / Kreator / Cyhra -  Jannus Live - St. Petersburg, Florida - March 10th, 2018

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 Saturday, March 10th saw a fantastic triple bill at Jannus Live in downtown St. Petersburg featuring Cyhra, Kreator and Sabaton (co - headliners on this tour), there were no local opening bands for this show. Jannus is the one venue in the area that we weren't very familiar with as we haven't attended a single show there in the 10 years that we've been living down here in Florida. Most of the Rock / Metal shows in the St. Pete area end up at the State Theatre, we've been hearing rumors that the State Theatre has possibly been sold and is getting ready to close, not sure how true this is but it could be a reason why Jannus seems to be the hot spot for great concerts in the area lately.

 We arrived in St. Pete VERY early for this show, the St. Pete Grand Prix (Indy Car Race) was also in town the weekend of the show and we were worried that traffic and parking would be a major issue, well we were happily relieved to see that this was not the case at all. After parking we met up with friends for a couple of hours at a local German Restaurant for some good food and great beer! As we made our way to the scene of the concert there was a light rain falling, not a good sign at all as Jannus Live is an outdoor venue! There was quite a long line of Metalheads in line standing in the rain waiting to get into the show, we picked up our credentials and made our way in through the crowd. Inside the venue there was a large crowd anticipating the nights event, after the amount of time that we had spent in line we only had about 15 minutes until the show started. I was happy to see that there was a photo pit at Jannus, it has been my experience that most of the venues where we attend shows in this area have no photo pit at all. I wasn't happy to see that the stage was about 10 feet high, it was going to be a challenge to get decent shots of the concert.

 Cyhra is a fairly new band formed in 2017 by former Amaranthe vocalist Jake E. and former In Flames guitarist Jesper Stromblad who are longtime friends. We were surprised when we learned that Jake had left Amaranthe as he was one of the founding members of that band and his vocals are were a huge part of their sound. He has a very melodic type voice, we had seen Amaranthe in the past so we knew what to expect from Jake as far as his vocal abilities are concerned and he didn't disappoint!  While they only performed 6 songs at this show it was enough to win the crowd over, the band got a great response, hopefully they'll get a chance to do a headline tour or at least get on another package tour. The other members of Cyhra are Euge Valovirta on guitar, bassist Peter Iwers and Alex Landenburg on drums. See full setlist below…

 Kreator, formed in Essen, Germany in 1982 are considered one of the "three Kings" of the Teutonic Thrash Metal scene, the other two being Destruction and Sodom. I have been a fan of Kreator for well over 30 years and have never had the opportunity to see them live until now. As a fan of old-school thrash metal I was VERY much looking forward to their set! The band performed 15 songs, some of the highlights being Flag of Hate, Enemy of God, Pleasure to Kill and Gods of Violence. There was a huge amount of smoke on stage for their set, an over abundance actually, the combination of the fog and the stage lights made the band difficult to see at times and near impossible to get good photos off. There was also a light drizzle still falling for the beginning of their set. Those were the only slight disappointments in a VERY impressive set as the band kicked ass! The crowd was into it with fists raised in the air and many in the crowd singing loudly, to say Kreator was well received in St. Petersburg Florida would be an understatement! Kreator consist of vocalist / guitarist Mille Petrozza, Christian Giesler on bass, guitarist Sami Yli Sirnio and drummer Jurgen "Ventor" Reil. Full setlist is below…

 Kreator was a tough act to follow as many in the crowd seemed to be here mainly for them, we heard many people throughout the night make comments in this vein. We also noticed that crowd did seem a bit smaller during Sabaton's set. If any band could overcome this and win the crowd over though it is Sabaton! Their brand of Military Metal was well received by the St. Petersburg crowd and the band seemed to be enjoying themselves on stage with smiles all around. For a band with such weighty subject matters as War and The Holocaust, the band seem a very "happy" bunch of guys on stage! The band all wore camouflage, Army helmets hung from the mic. stands along with ammo belts, the large screen at the back of the stage showed scenes of War as well as song lyrics and Vocalist Joakim Broden wears what appears to be a bulletproof vest, Sabaton came on stage prepared for battle! At one point in the show Broden picks up a guitar and says how bad he plays, he proceeded to play a few riffs from Judas Priest's Breaking the Law and Metallica's Master of Puppets, didn't sound bad at all to me! The band also let the audience choose between two different songs to perform, White Death or Into the Fire, the St. Pete crowd choose White Death, this was determined by how loud the audience cheered when asked about what song they wanted to hear. The other members of Sabaton are guitarist Chris Rorland, guitarist Tommy Johansson, Par Sundstrom on bass and Hannes Van Dahl on drums. Full setlist is below...

 This was a great show and a fun night out with friends, you couldn't ask for a better concert line up then these 3 bands! We would like to thank Kristin Torres from Nuclear Blast for setting the press credentials up for us and Cyhra, Kreator and Sabaton for putting on a GREAT concert!

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