Door time: 7 pm
Start of show time: 8 pm
Time I actually showed up: 8:30-ish
Songs I had to endure by the local black metal crust-core band opening for Sabaton, which I'm sure was fine for what it is but was so very not my thing: 1.5
Wait time between bands, during which I started entertaining myself by counting things, in minutes: 35 or 40
Duration of Sabaton's set, in minutes: 75-ish
Ticket price, in dollars: 22
Discount for paying cash, in dollars: 2
My sense of satisfaction at having remembered to bring cash, in hedons: several
Shows on Sabaton's current U.S. tour before this one: 1, reportedly
Guesstimated audience size: a little shy of 100
Approximate auditory equivalent audience size, according to front man Joakim's stage patter: 2000. (We were an enthusiastic bunch.)
Fraction of female audience members: 15%-ish
Fraction of audience wearing Sabaton concert t-shirts: 45%
Fraction of audience wearing non-Sabaton concert t-shirts: 35%
Number of shirts that were not black: 6 (I was not one of them!)
Estimated median audience member age: late 20s
Fraction of male audience with shoulder-length or longer hair: 40%
Fraction of male audience with short hair: 40%
Fraction of male audience with no hair: 5%
Mohawks: 1
Average mohawk height, in inches: 4
Average mohawk width, in millimeters: 0.5 (It was very well-constructed and fin-like.)
Time Sabaton took the stage: 9:15 pm
Bottles of water cached around the stage at the beginning of the show: 15
Maximum distance from me to closest member of the band, averaged over the entire show, in feet: 3.5. (I was right up against the stage at the front of the pit. When Joakim said he had goosebumps? I could tell he was not lying.)
Ranking of previous statistic in reasons why I am now a big fan of seeing moderately-popular acts in small venues: 1
Average height of mosh pit: about 3 inches shorter than me in boots
Tiny little women in the pit: 3. Seriously, they were very small. But they rocked just as hard as the rest of us. \m/
Number of songs where people in the "pit" were actually moshing: 1
Fraction of cute members of the original lineup who are still in the band after the recent retirement of a bunch of bandmembers: 100%
Fraction of new bandmembers who are actually kinda hot: 33%
Fraction of resulting new lineup that makes for good eye-candy: 60%
Cute guys at the venue in general: about a dozen
Number of smokin' hot guys that were bouncers or other Bluebird staff members: like, 4. What's up with that?
Number of ribs visible through the shirt of the new drummer, who, like all drummers, is really skinny: 6 or 7.
Gears on lead singer's new steampunky metal chest-plate vest thingy: 34
Functional nerve endings left in lead singer's right thigh: zero. (He pounds his fist against it while singing. Hard. A LOT.)
Average distance between lead singer's center of mass and the floor, averaged over the entire show, in inches: about 18. Dude likes his tiger stance, is what I'm sayin'.
Number of times that he couldn't get through whatever between-song commentary he had intended because the crowd would start chanting Sa-Ba-Ton! and he would crack up because it delighted him so: almost all of them.
Songs I could actually remember the lyrics well enough to sing along coherently with for anything but the chorus: like, 2
Songs I sang along with anyway: all of them
Amount of time the bass player (Pär) spent grinning and looking totally blissed-out, even while thrashing out heavy bass lines: 99.7%
Songs they played with lyrics that are mostly the names of other metal bands that are actually about Joakim's penis: 0 (That's "Metal Machine", which they did not play.)
Songs they played with lyrics that are mostly the names of other metal bands that are NOT about Joakim's penis: 1 (He told us so.)
Total references to other metal bands in the lyrics to "Metal Crüe" (which is what they did play): 35
Total wordcount for the lyrics to "Metal Crüe": 108
Logical coherency of lyrics to "Metal Crüe": 3%
Predictable complaints about Jesus Christ, you people have no oxygen up here, how the hell do you do it? 1
Justifiability of aforementioned complaint: 100%
Songs from forthcoming album: 1
Encores: 1
Number of pills I have taken in hopes that my neck will not be super-sore tomorrow: 4 (2 ibuprofen, 2 acetaminophen)
Net satisfaction level: 100%
