After touring most of Europe, finally homebase Helsinki had the chance to see Beast In Black on 10 February 2018 at Nosturi. The band has recently released their debut album “Berserker” and the short path that they have walked on, has been so far blessed with success. Accompanying them for the evening was Oceanhoarse, one of Finland’s best kept secrets. The band has been working on the project for two years, behind the shadows and has a lot of familiar faces from the Finnish metal scene, eg. Ben Varon (ex-Amoral) and Tommi Tuovinen (ex-MyGrain). With only one single “The Oceanhoarse” out so far, you don’t really know beforehand what the show is going to be like, one can only hope that it’s going to be a kickass performance, something I at least assumed with a top-notch lineup like this. Check out the full gallery here.
When the band kicked off their first song, I could only see that my assumptions about this band were right: Heavy metal with a capital H. Oceanhoarse is clearly not kidding, their riffs are heavy, songs are brutal and they have the best stage energy. But on the other hand, what else can you expect? The musicians involved in this projects, are after all professionals. Seeing that this is only the second show that they are performing ever, with no debut album out there, I can only conclude in general that I am very much impressed by what this band so far already has to offer, based solely on their first single, the band sounds even heavier and better live.
Their setlist consisted in total of 7 songs. Hearing most of the songs only for the first time, it’s hard to give a track-by-track review. I can only say that my personal highlights were “Feed The Sirens”, “From Hell To Oblivion” and of course their debut single “The Oceanhoarse”, with the latter Oceanhoarse ended their much anticipated and successful second performance ever. Based on what I heard during this show, I can only recommend everyone to look out for the debut album, because whenever it will be released, it’s going to blow your mind!
Setlist
1. Feed The Sirens
2. Death Row Center
3. Fading Neons
4. From Hell To Oblivion
5. Intruder
6. Waves
7. The Oceanhoarse
After Oceanhoarse it was time for the much anticipated first show in Helsinki of Beast In Black. A tiny bit behind schedule, the famous “Night Crawler” of Judas Priest blasted through the speakers, telling us to beware Beast In Black, it’s back. After this appropriate song to prelude the evening, Beast In Black came on stage with much enthusiasm from the audience. It’s immediately clear that everyone in Nosturi has been looking forward to this event for a while now. The show was sold out completely and yeah, it was really packed. It was hard to manage my way through the mass of people.
The band started their concert with the powerful self-titled song “Beast In Black”, one of the highlights of the album, is also a strong opener of the concert. Best moment of the song was the guitar solo by Kasperi Heikkinen, followed by a solo from Anton Kabanen. The band starts off with so much energy and it’s already clear from the first second that guitarist Anton Kabanen and the rest of the band have also been looking forward to their first headline shows. This is proved by the fact that they can’t seem to stop smiling during the first song.
After a powerful start, the band took us to the catchy “Eternal Fire”, maybe not the best song on the album, but it works so well live. “Blood of a Lion” follows, after which “Go To Hell” again shows us that vocalist Yannis Papadopoulos is undeniably a great singer. His voice can bend in so many ways, it almost seems as if there is no limit to his reach and what impresses me more is that he makes it seem so easy.
After “Go To Hell” it was time for three Battle Beast-classics “Out on the Streets”, “Lionheart” and “Touch in the Night”. The mastermind behind these songs Anton Kabanen seemed to have a lot of fun performing them again. Yannis Papadopoulos’ voice fits these songs extremely well and the fans were extremely excited, especially during “Touch in the Night”, which after all really is a classic.
“Crazy, Mad, Insane” has a lot of mixed thoughts to it, because the song is more disco than the rest of the album, it leaves some with mixed feelings. I, on the other hand, always have thought of the song as genius. It’s a really fun song and that’s also clear in their performance. While the show in general of course can’t have too much “show”-aspect in there yet, because the band just started out, they did incorporate a small choreography in “Crazy, Mad, Insane”. Mate Molnar, Kasperi Heikkinen and Anton Kabanen, each are wearing a set of glasses, which have a text on them, obviously the text reads “Crazy”, “Mad” and “Insane”. Once in a while when a certain note hits, they turn their faces to the left. I have no explanation as to why, maybe because of the humor behind it, maybe because of the little extra touch it provided, but this by far is my personal highlight of the show.
“Blind and Frozen” and “End of the World” marked a much too soon ending for the concert. In general, the setlist was a great balance between some covers and original songs. Well balanced out between heavy and mellow and slow. We were treated with no less than 16 songs, which is quite a lot. There was no second of this concert that my mind started wandering off, no second of this concert that felt like a filler, no moment to not have fun.
Maybe it has to do with these great set of songs, maybe it has to do with the musicians behind the band, maybe it has to do with Anton Kabanen‘s skills as a composer, or maybe even with the charismatic Yannis Papadopoulos, but there’s no question that this headlining show, works great and I might already have to pull out the “best concert of the year”-card – already. A feeling that seemed to be a shared one, when leaving the venue and seeing happy faces all around me.
Setlist
1. Beast In Black
2. Eternal Fire
3. Blood of a Lion
4. Go To Hell
5. Out on the Streets (Battle Beast cover)
6. Lionheart (Battle Beast cover)
7. Touch in the Night (Battle Beast cover)
8.The Fifth Angel
9. Born Again
10. Ghost In The Rain
11. Zodd The Immortal
12. Crazy, Mad, Insane
13. Out of Control (Battle Beast cover)
14. Wild Child (WASP cover)
15. Blind and Frozen
16. End of the World
