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01/15/2022

A video Interview with Sabaton's Joakim Brodén

By MIKE LEWIS // Talking with Joakim Brodén of the Swedish metal band Sabaton. First in a series.

COVID has certainly made things problematic and on the concert end of things we’ve been dealing with cancellations and other issues. As a photographer I have gone from close to shooting nearly a show every week to having only four concerts to my name over the past nearly two years. As some might remember, my daughter Sydney also started doing concert photography as well and I had convinced her to change focus on her YouTube channel. The plan was to really start doing as much as we could and then we were sidelined.

After several months of no concerts happening Sydney decided that it might be time to change our focus. She wanted to do video games instead and so Sydney’s Playroom transformed to PlayStation Infinite with a focus on PlayStation gaming. However, I knew that at some point concert photography would return. I decided that it was time to start a new channel that was focused on concert photos as well as music and thus Photo Concerto was born.

After our initial interview and plans of returning to the photo pit, things didn’t go as planned. Concerts at times were postponed or cancelled, some weren’t allowing photographers at all, others wanted photos to be taken outside the pit area which can always be a challenge and in Sydney’s case, she often found herself declined. The one show she was going to shoot with me, Swedish extreme metal act Avatar, ended up being postponed after one of the opening bands caught COVID. As a side note, Syndey does in fact like Avatar and I think that right now it’s one of her favorite bands.

While sitting in this state of limbo however, another opportunity was presented. I had the opportunity to interview Joakim Brodén, the front man for yet another Swedish metal band, Sabaton. They were in the United States on tour with legendary metal icons Judas Priest. This tour also ended up being postponed shortly after our interview although it was due to guitarist Richie Faulkner having a heart condition and immediate surgery. The band will return this year although without Sabaton as a support act which is rather disappointing.

For this first interview I had some issues. I wasn’t able to record things as I had hoped, my audio didn’t come through, and I had to do some editing to try and salvage everything. I even had to cut out the part where Sydney had the chance to say hello to one of her favorite bands due to the audio issues. I will note however that other interviews have been different thanks to a new computer, mic, and webcam. This isn’t the only interview, it’s merely the first, and there will be others along the way. Eventually we will get back into the photo pit again, hopefully very soon in fact as Sydney and I are potentially shooting Ghost in the just a few weeks. I’m not sure what it is with her and Swedish heavy metal, but this is another group she absolutely loves.

I present to you the first interview for the channel with more to come. Hopefully I can really find my voice by episode 46.

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