Ensiferum recently released their new album “Two Paths”, even though they already did a show in Helsinki celebrating the release, they guys must have thought that Helsinki can never have enough Ensiferum and thus had a show 18 May 2018 at Nosturi, Helsinki. I personally haven’t seen Ensiferum live that much, even though I have been listening to their music since I was a teenager, so I was finally happy to see them.
First band playing that night was Trio De Facto, an acoustic cover act consisting out of singer Mikael Salo, guitarist Esa Orjatsalo and no other than guitarist Sami Hinkka. Trio De Facto is a side product of their band Metal De Facto. So basically the three guys play music they like without the pressure of being taken too serious.
They started out with a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid”. The audience, at first a bit hesitant, soon understood that this act is not there to be the best metal cover act out there, but to be the funniest one. Warming up a crowd is never easy, but it is once in a while great that someone does it with humour. This showed also a completely different side of Sami Hinkka, who almost was incognito with his “Make Power Metal Great Again” cap that he so proudly shared with his fellow band mates.
Hits like “Blind and Frozen”, “Square Hammer”, “For Whom The Bells Toll” and “Battle Hymn” all introduced us to the great sense of humour of the guys. The crowd after a little while started getting more and more into the music and started soon singing along with the songs, a climax was reached when the band started playing “Taivas Lyö Tulta” of Teräsbetoni and the audience started to cheer along. Unfortunately, that was the last song of the night. But if this is a foretaste of what the guys have in store for us with their band Metal De Facto, then we surely have something great coming up soon.
Next up to play was Oceanhoarse, a band that I have seen quite some times already, but haven’t been around that long. The band now has three singles out “The Oceanhoarse”; “Fading Neons” and “Waves”. An album might still take a little while, but at least the band is actively playing live shows, so we can all enjoy their music. Every time I have seen them, their setlist has changed a little bit, but shows of great powerful songs, with heavy riffs and a lot of headbang-worthy moments.
The energy these guys have is really top-notch, given their experience, that’s really no surprise at all. Even though the band hasn’t been playing live that much and I was pleasantly surprised the first time I saw them as a support act for Beast In Black, I think their set this time around was even more tight and powerful. So far this show definitely counts as the best one I have seen.
So came Ensiferum to the stage, a concert I had been looking out to for years and what a concert it was… The band burst onto the stage with “For Those About to Fight for Metal”, a song taken from their new album “Two Paths”. The instant cheers and massive energy from the audience, tells me it was a successful start and definitely a good way to start the set. Next up was the title track of their latest album, but luckily Ensiferum also wasn’t shy to throw some classics into the mix either, including “Treacherous Gods”, “Lai Lai Hei” and “In My Sword I Trust”. There was a fantastic atmosphere in whole Nosturi, including the stage.
The band clearly had fun and a special surprise for the crowd was when first Emmi Silvennoinen joined on stage to play some songs together. Before the next song Ensiferum had yet another surprise for us in store and invited Jari Mäenpää from the audience on stage to perform “Tsingis Khan” with them. The crowd was clearly stoked about this. After the show, I go home with a smile and think that one thing about Ensiferum seems to be a general fact… These guys sure know how to throw a party.
Setlist
