Sabaton will be using the tour to support their latest DVD, Swedish Empire Live. Filmed in front of 600,000+ enthusiastic fans at their headlining festival appearance at Poland's Woodstock festival, Swedish Empire Live captures the band's high-energy live stage show celebrating the triumph of the human spirit.
Sabaton, who perform with a full complement of Sennheiser microphones and wireless systems, will be returning to European soil at the end of May where they will be headlining at some of Europe's biggest heavy metal festivals.
Formed in 1999, in Falun, Sweden, the band's massive popularity has remained unscathed even though many of the original members have chosen different directions. Band spokesman and bassist Pär Sundström and lead singer Joakim Broden, whose distinctive vocals have characterised the Sabaton sound from the very beginning, remain at the core of the new line-up announced in April 2012.
Sabaton uses Sennheiser microphones throughout, and for good reason according to monitor engineer Otto Kroymann. "Joakim Broden, our lead singer, has such a wide dynamic range that we have had real problems finding a suitable microphone," he explained. "However, when we had the chance to test the Sennheiser SKM 2000 wireless system combined with the MMD 945 capsule, we knew that our search was over. The microphone is really well suited to Joakim's dynamic range and the sonic quality is exactly what both engineers - me on monitors and Elvis [Elfstrom] at FoH - were looking for."
Broden himself is very happy with the results. "I liked the feel of it from the start," he said. "It has just the right balance for my style." He uses a total of three handheld SKM 2000 / MMD 945 systems during the show as they have to be changed regularly to keep them dry.
As a result of this positive experience, it was decided to switch the rest of the band over to Sennheiser vocal microphones as well. "The audio quality and tone were just perfect for the whole show," reported Kroymann. "In fact, we are also using the SK 2000 beltpack transmitters for our guitars and bass in combination with the SKM 2000/MMD 945 microphones - this was a solid choice for us from an audio point of view and also meant that we could benefit from the integrated antenna combiner of the EM 2050 and reduce the problems we had previously with RF interference."
(Jim Evans)
