So, here’s the second part of my in-depth report from this year’s Hellsinki Metal Festival. On Friday, I arrived in Helsinki by car, to be back home at a decent hour to get more than just a wink of sleep. Well, of course it didn’t work as planned. When the music stopped, I had to discuss the first day’s highlights with my friends for a good while before heading to my car. On a peculiar side note, Mother Nature also scared the shit out of me on my way home. About a month earlier, when I returned home from the Tuska Festival‘s day two, I saw something I’d never seen before – a fox chasing a rabbit across the street in the small hours of the night, just about a kilometer away from my home. This time, I guess I was extremely lucky that my car is such a shit-box that’s running on its last leg, because had it not made a sheer hell of a noise and scared a young moose away, the poor thing might have landed on my windshield at the Tampere highway. I was already buzzing on all sorts of feel-good hormones because of the kick-ass festival experience from day one at Nordis, but with that extra adrenaline boost, there was no way I could fall asleep too quickly. So, I might as well have traveled by train and arrived home an hour or two later – I only got a wink of sleep, anyway. So, I figured it wouldn’t make much of a difference if I arrived at Helsinki by train. So, I did – and, like usual, I started the second festival day in a sleep-deprived haze, longing for a cup of strong coffee.
In terms of music, the second day of HMF 2026 kicked off with a good jab of symphonic deathcore laced with mythical overtones. ASSEMBLE THE CHARIOTS have been paving the way for Finnish extreme metal since 2008 with their unique blend of orchestral soundscapes, blackened guitar riffs, and terror-inducing vocals. You cannot help but appreciate the way their conceptual bangers plunge into astronomical themes in a somewhat similar manner to the early albums by the psychedelic death-metal sages, BLOOD INCANTATION. The music is quite different, but of high quality, so these two bands have quite a lot in common, actually. It probably stemmed from the interdimensional themes of the lyrics that the music was characteristically bombastic and cinematic – and it sure put a somewhat science-fiction-esque stamp on the band, overall, that they were all uniformly clad in Jedi-vibed black robes. I also couldn’t help but notice how the opening band on both festival days had a world-class vocalist, especially regarding the harsh vocals. I mean, Onni Holmström on the mic sure didn’t leave anyone cold with his brutal antics ranging from the standard black-metal snarls to chthonic gutturals that resonated by turns with the air of brutal slam and LORNA SHORE-like deathcore grunts. I was only vaguely familiar with the band before this show, so I have no idea whatsoever about the band’s setlist – apart from the fact that it packed a lot of punch. No wonder their 2024 debut full-length “Unyielding Night” has been praised as a masterpiece of cinematic and blackened deathcore. I’m not saying this bunch challenges the celestial spheres of LORNA SHORE just yet, but they are on the right path, that’s for sure. The band is evidently going places already, but with performances of this caliber, they will be going to bigger places in no time at all. While the symphonic elements may not exactly be on par with, say, FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE – these rogues have a penchant for a tad more cinematic and less classically tinged deathcore sound – the level of intensity makes ASSEMBLE THE CHARIOTS a kindred spirit of sorts to that wild bunch; these guys were insane – and I mean that as a compliment. So, by the looks of it, day two at HMF 2026 kicked off with a blast.
Next up, the Finnish band that won the Wacken Metal Battle last year was about to start setting things in motion on the main stage. NUMENTO is one of those up-and-coming Finnish metal acts that I’ve been planning to check out for quite a good while, but something seemingly far more important has always interrupted me, so their critically acclaimed 2024 album “The Antimatter Fantasy” has remained on my back burner – until now. Their performance at Nordis was way too fierce not to finally get down to business with that album. The band has released three full-lengths so far, but that latest installment in their catalog has been hailed as a strong selection of progressive melodeath – and the catchword that has been thrown around pretty liberally about this album was the very reason why that endeavor has been on my To-Do list ever since – the term, “progressive.” It sure has helped that vocalist Katri H-A‘s cleans have been likened to Cammie Gilbert of OCEANS OF SLUMBER, and her harsh vocals prompted someone to assume she could audition for ARCH ENEMY. The band’s music has been hailed just as versatile as their vocalist, so need I say more? Oh, yes, there’s one more thing: Katri H-A also puts the traditional Finnish folk instrument, kantele, to good use in some of their songs! If that’s not enough of a “Shut up and take my money!” type of guarantee, I don’t know what is. If this band is on the festival lineup, you simply have to check it out. Period. So, just how progressive were these rogues at the Hellsinki Metal Festival, then?
Well, they could have been proggier, of course, but you can take my words with a grain of salt, because I’ve been a sucker for vintage prog since the delicate age of 18. As far as progressively tinged melodeath goes, NUMENTO belongs to the upper echelons of the sub-genre, no doubt. The songs that featured the kantele more prominently got me buzzing the most, obviously, simply by way of being more atmospheric. You see, melodeath and atmospherics are a match made in heaven, if you ask me. Then, it was nigh impossible not to be completely overwhelmed by the versatile vocal prowess of Katri H-A. Her voice sure sounded forceful, regardless of whether she was belting those angelic cleans or wicked snarls. The description of her voice being a cross between Cammie Gilbert and Alissa White-Gluz is rather spot-on, and the best part indeed is that the band’s music is right on par with this type of versatility. Since their latest outing is still on my back burner, I’m not too sure about their setlist, but I guess it will suffice to say that it fucking slapped! At least, the band played these songs: “The Dark Web,” “Opilion,” and “Equinox,” all from the said album. Now, having heard these songs live, that album just popped to the first position on my To-Do list. It’s nigh impossible to come up with any excuses why I shouldn’t check it out in full ASAP. That’s the beauty of metal festivals – I find awesome new bands I weren’t even aware of, or I get a friendly reminder that I should finally get my lazy ass into checking out these fantastic albums that I’ve been putting on hold for way too long. You know how it is; when a band delivers a technical knockout from the festival stage, you finally realize, “Oh, they are THIS good!” – and then you feel slightly ashamed for not giving them a chance earlier. NUMENTO sure kicked ass, so jot that down.
Hailing from Turku, SEPULCHRAL CURSE is a band whose name sure did ring a bell. I’m pretty sure that it has popped up in the festival lineup of Tuska, at least once, over the past 5 years. I think the band played at the Tiivistämö sweatbox last year, but their showtime must have overlapped with something “bigger,” so I probably wasn’t even trying to squeeze my way into that tight venue back then. Now, I had the chance of a lifetime to put things right. Of course, their slot at HMF 2026 overlapped quite drastically with IOTUNN, but I’d heard too many good words about this bunch to skip their performance altogether. So, I decided to catch a few songs by this blackened death-metal juggernaut inside the hall and then rush outdoors to catch the latter half of IOTUNN‘s set. My plan to catch at least a little bit of every performance at this year’s HMF had worked fine so far, so I thought I’d better not ruin my good streak.
I’m not exactly a guru on the topic of blackened death metal, but after a few songs, I could tell that these metal rogues were something far more unique than your garden-variety mixture of black metal and death metal. I mean, those international bands that I do know from this sub-genre aren’t so monstrously heavy, bordering on atmospheric doom metal almost. I was told that it is a Finnish tradition in this particular metal niche to pummel the listener with the slow-crushing inertia of a dying black hole while keeping things nicely atmospheric. What is there not to like? As per the conventions of the old-school DM scene, the vocals were exclusively gutturals of the extremely low, almost chthonic variety, so it was pretty hard to discern whether the songs had actual lyrics or not, especially given the notoriously bad acoustics of the venue. (Off-topic: overall, the bands did sound pretty good at the indoor stage at Nordis, just like last year, so I reckon the sound engineers must be pretty damn good these days!) Those few songs that I heard, before I headed for IOTUNN outdoors, sounded pretty convincing. Atmospheric doom is one of my guilty pleasures, even though I have a reputation of being a hard-assed prog snob, so this band definitely went to my To-Do list: definitely gotta check out their 2023 album “Abhorrent Dimensions” later!
Danish IOTUNN was one of the bands that I had bookmarked in advance as a must-see thing in this year’s festival lineup. Their 2021 album “Access All Worlds” was in heavy rotation for quite some time on my playlist when I finally caught up with it last year – and then I moved on to their next endeavor, 2024’s “Kinship,” which slapped maybe even harder. The album was widely praised for its diversity and Jón Aldará’s (BARREN EARTH) haunting vocal power. The band throws progressive elements in the same mixing bowl with death metal and space rock – and it does it so damn well that it melts the mind. When I arrived at the Helsinki Stage 2 outdoors, the band was in full tilt with “Twilight” from the said 2024 album. Of course, I had to check on the Internet later which songs the band had played before I got to the venue, and I noticed that the setlist was predominantly focused on that album. In fact, the only song that did not come from it was the set closer, “The Tower of Cosmic Nihility,” which was from the 2021 endeavor. Well, yeah, I sure felt bummed for missing half the set, but what can you do… Maybe I ought to put some effort into learning how to astral project or something, because these two metal festivals in Helsinki seem hell-bent on offering more and more impressive festival lineups year after year. As for IOTUNN‘s live performance, well, it was next-level epic, to put it briefly. Aldará looked like a druid necromancer, or a human-sized Jawa from Star Wars, wearing that rough and long, hooded robe – and his vocal prowess further cemented that necromancer vibe – his harsh vocals were deliciously raw, and his cleans resonated with the force of a thunder god, just as I expected. The rest of the band weren’t playing second fiddle, either, but provided us with a top-tier performance all the way through. Words like “epic,” “colossal,” and “massive” are often associated with this band – and their live show turned out to be a pretty compelling demonstration as to why. If this space-prog-death-metal juggernaut is coming to this neck of the woods any time soon, I’d better make sure I won’t miss a second of that performance. IOTUNN offered us one of the peak performances at this year’s Hellsinki Metal Festival. What a great fucking band!
MISÞYRMING is an Icelandic metal squad whose signature sound is an intriguing mixture of black metal and thrash. Yeah, razor-sharp guitar riffs and pummeling blast beats are the name of the game. The band’s name is Icelandic for “mistreatment,” and I reckon it gives you a hint about their choice of sonic violence. This bunch was yet another band I had bookmarked in advance not to miss. I just had a hunch that they might be quite good, coming from Iceland, since I have yet to come across a bad Icelandic band – regardless of the genre. After chatting up some random metalheads on Friday, this band’s name popped up quite a few times when I asked people about what bands they expected to see the most. So, I guess my hunch was not entirely wrong. The band’s 2022 album “Með Hamri” has been dubbed a delirious, unpredictable, and ferocious selection of hostile intensity – and the same pretty much applies to their live performance at Nordis. I also couldn’t help but notice how their drummer M.S. made even angry blast beats sound groovy! It seems that Hellsinki Metal Festival is putting up tough competition to Steelfest when it comes to top-tier black-metal bands, even though the event is not profiled as an extreme-metal happening exclusively. This Icelandic thunderstorm made it quite clear why they were chosen by Nergal to perform BEHEMOTH‘s “Sventevith” album with him later on this Saturday, at the indoor venue. While I kinda expected that this band would be good, they sure took me by surprise – and a highly pleasant one at that. Of course, I had already bookmarked that special BEHEMOTH-themed show as something I would like to see; now, it was suddenly something I must not miss. Okay, I had to skip the last song in the set in order to catch a few songs by the French blackened post-hardcore outfit, ORLY, playing inside the hall. They released their debut full-length “On.Rouvrira.Les.Yeux” last year, and it has drawn quite a lot of attention for its cinematic and heavy sound. Oh, yeah, there are the two magic words again: cinematic and post. I’m all in.
These French metal-cinematographers seem to be so fresh out of the oven that you cannot find too much info about them online, but I reckon that is about to change. If their performance at Nordis was anything to judge by, ORLY won’t stay in the shadows much longer. Since they only have one full-length out, I guess the songs we heard were mostly from that one. I only got to hear maybe half of their set, because it overlapped so much with that Icelandic black-metal hurricane, but the songs that I did catch were impressive enough to put the band firmly on my musical radar. As far as the post-metal aesthetic goes, ORLY lands somewhere between vintage NEUROSIS and CULT OF LUNA. Their signature sound resonated with a tad more oppressive air than those post-rockish Swedes, but the slow-crushing riffs were nicely balanced with an ample amount of atmospheric sections, which were predominantly closer to cinematic ambient than post-rock. Toward the end of the set, the band briefly side-stepped into the tribal rhythms of CULT OF LUNA, too. To give credit where it’s due, these rogues did not sound too much like either of these post-metal mammoths. Sure, you could hear where their inspiration came from, but they had something far more unique in the cooker than your average sludge-metal pastiches. With the band hailing from France, I was kinda expecting a remarkably more post-rock-oriented approach, but I was pleasantly surprised that the band had carved a tad more unique niche out of the vast post-metal morass. I mean, French post-rockers belong to the upper echelons of the genre, sure, but the scene is pretty over-saturated already. Besides, you can craft cinematic soundscapes also without noodling aimlessly in the Aeolian mode with a clean-tone guitar that’s fed through a maxed-out boutique reverb. These guys sure know how. Encyclopaedia Metallum is still blissfully unaware of this band, but ORLY does have a Bandcamp profile where you can check out that outstanding debut album. I highly recommend it, because that’s what I’m gonna do!
When I got out of the ice hall, the Finnish melodeath-goes-swamp-metal squad, KALMAH, was in full tilt already. They are yet another Finnish veteran band that I was not very familiar with, even though their name had popped up here and there quite a few times over the years. During the heyday of Finnish melodeath (meaning, when CHILDREN OF BODOM had their breakthrough), I was too busy with something else entirely, and I didn’t even know what swamp metal was supposed to sound like. That said, I was curious to finally hear these rogues in action, if only to see whether the mental image I had about their music had any foundation whatsoever in reality.
At this point, I felt that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to get something to eat, too, while vibing to the band’s music. Both of these big metal events in Helsinki really excel when it comes to the food vendors: you do not have to wait for aeons to get your burger or kebab or whatever, and while the price range is not necessarily cheap, it’s not overly expensive either, not like at some of those hipster festivals. So, I grabbed some fish-and-chips and a soda to go. Perhaps it was not just as authentic as the stuff you would get in the United Kingdom, but it was good enough – and what’s best, the size of the portion was more than decent. With a belly full of goodness, I inched closer to the Helsinki Stage 2.
Since I did not know any of their song by heart, I had to cheat a little here; I took a sneak peek at their setlist from my trustworthy Internet source, and I couldn’t avoid noticing how the set was pretty nicely balanced between the band’s early stuff and new bangers from their last couple of albums. The new songs were delivered right up front, in the first half of the set, so I missed a good few of them, but I did get to hear a good rundown of their old classics. Plus, the band’s frontman Pekka Kokko turned out to be quite a jovial guy, who delighted the audience with his not-to-be-taken-too-seriously fisherman’s tales. I think I arrived at the venue somewhere in the middle of their 2006 banger “The Groan of Wind,” from “The Black Waltz” album, which was played the most in the band’s setlist. Their fanbase seemed to be rather prominently comprised of thrash-vested Gen Xers, so I reckon these old bangers were exactly what their fans expected to hear. Did you notice how I didn’t use the word “old”? You see, as a proud member of Generation X, I think using that word is a bit offensive, really. Finally, the set was brought to a close with “Hades,” from the band’s 2002 endeavor “Swamplord.” It put a nice frosting on this swampy melodeath extravaganza.
Next, I was faced with the hardest decision during the whole weekend. You see, PARADISE LOST and HORNA were scheduled to play at the same time. Both bands are Legends with a capital L. HORNA has a reputation of being something of a cult band in the Finnish black-metal scene; founded in 1994, the band has remained true to the traditional, raw aesthetics of black metal – and I had never seen them on stage. Having seen PARADISE LOST already once this year, in February when they visited Ääniwalli in Helsinki, the obvious choice here would have been HORNA, but it only made things worse that I’d seen these Gothic legends already – I knew just how good they should, could, and would be. In February, the band was on fire.
So, I made a plan to check out PARADISE LOST first and stay at the main stage for some time and then head indoors for some legendary black-metal blasting. Haha! How was I kidding?! Really?! I’m terribly sorry for HORNA, but the band really had no chance, because let’s be honest here: it is one of those few immutable laws of the universe that you’d better not overlap with PARADISE LOST, like ever. So, it was here that my solemn plan to catch every band went to shit. Plus, I had inched pretty close to the stage – it would have required some illicit elbow tactics to get out of there in the middle of the set, because we were all packed like sardines in a tin can. Sure, I assured myself now and then that “After this song, I’ll leave for the indoor venue,” but then the band played another banger that transfixed me into a fist-pumping position, then another, and another, until the very end. PARADISE LOST, you slinky bastards! And I’m guessing nobody will believe me, so here’s the setlist; check it out for yourself:
- Serpent on the Cross
- One Second
- The Last Time
- Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us
- The Enemy
- As I Die
- Hallowed Land
- Tyrants Serenade
- Smalltown Boy (BRONSKI BEAT cover)
- Embers Fire
- Ghosts
- Silence Like the Grave
Yeah, it reads like a Greatest Hits compilation. Then, as if this were not enough, the band was every bit as fired-up as in February. There are bands that age like fine wine – until they have aged a bit too much and turn sour – and then, there are bands that age like fine whiskey. PARADISE LOST is a prime specimen of the latter kind. I never saw them on stage in the 1990s when they released some of their most seminal albums, but I’ve seen them a few times in recent years – and each time, they turned out to be better than the last time, which was pretty damn awesome, to begin with. That’s quite a feat for a band with more than 30 years under their belt! Let me tell you one thing: seeing PARADISE LOST in such a pristine shape two times within the time span of 6 months or so sure felt like winning the lottery twice! I reckon it speaks volumes that some of the evil-looking metalheads around me sang along to the songs throughout the whole set. People really seemed to love this band (who wouldn’t?). It was hard to tell how many people there were at the main stage, because I was squeezed in the pit area, but I figure there was quite a sizable crowd – oh, yeah, I dared to venture into that nutball area because I figured these types of Gothic schlagers weren’t exactly the best mosh-pit material. I was correct, too; the area did not explode into a human pinball at any point during PARADISE LOST‘s performance, which was pretty nice, because – let’s face it – I think I’m too old for that kind of stuff. Long story short, PARADISE LOST was the absolute peak of the HMF weekend so far in every conceivable manner. The elderly statesmen of Gothic brilliance did it again!
Then, for something completely different… The Finnish up-and-coming alt-metal bunch, CYAN KICKS, started their gig on the outdoor venue right next to the main stage. Can I say “up-and-coming” about a band that’s been around for 10 years already? Well, you know what I mean, don’t you? The band is relatively young and hungry for world domination – yeah, that sort of up-and-coming. They played at the Tuska Festival last year, and they played one hell of a killer set of unashamedly pop-tinged metal, or high-energy arena rock, if you will. The old-school brigades may not exactly fall in love with this type of metal aesthetic, but I reckon I have sold my soul to the pop demons a long time ago, so I feel no shame admitting that this bunch rocks pretty damn hard. They kicked ass at Suvilahti last year, and they sure kicked ass at Nordis, too. Their slot overlapped with the Swedish power-metal freakshow, TUNGSTEN, so I only caught the first half of their set. I had already messed up my solemn plan to catch every band, but the least I could do at this point was try to get back on track. So, that’s what I set out to do.
I stayed for the first five or six songs of their set, and most of them seemed to be from their latest album “Come Hell, Come High Water,” released last year. I was delighted to recognize the last song that I caught before leaving – “Dancing With Demons.” I must have heard it on the radio, because it rang a bell at Suvilahti last year, as well. So, yeah, the band is pretty radio-friendly, but there is something quite irresistible in their high-octane, adrenaline-spiked, feel-good bangers. Yeah, y’know, I’m a Finn, and we just love to wallow in deep melancholy, because the winter is so bleak and all, but… every once in a while, it’s nice to just put on some feel-good bangers – and this band sure knows how to craft those. These new songs were pretty exclusively of that sort, and I wouldn’t have really minded if I could have stayed until the very end. This high-energy shot of adrenaline in between PARADISE LOST‘s Gothic doom and TRIPTYKON‘s exclusive set of even more pronounced darkness, scheduled on the main stage next, served as a nice breather kind of thing. Having it cut short like this resonated with a peculiar air of a deja vu. In fact, I had to revisit my festival report from Tuska 2025, because I had a feeling, and – lo’ and behold! – my hunch proved correct, once again: I seem to have been cursed with some kind of voodoo jinx concerning this band, because I only saw half of their set at Suvilahti, too! Their slot overlapped with HAVUKRUUNU, then. Well, maybe the day will come when I get to see a full, uninterrupted set from this bunch. The day was not today, though. You see, while power-metal is not my go-to genre when it comes to metal music, there are a few rather intriguing modern power-metal acts, and TUNGSTEN is one of them. Thus, there was no way I was going to miss their performance entirely.
Inside the hall, Swedish power-metal act TUNGSTEN was about to start any minute. I didn’t know much about the band, apart from the fact that the band had been founded by ex-HAMMERFALL drummer Anders Johansson and his two sons, Karl and Nick, reinforced by vocalist Michael Andersson of CLOUDSCAPE fame. Their debut full-length “We Will Rise” was released in 2019, but I was blissfully unaware of what the band was supposed to sound like. Power-metal is a pretty vague label, with the styles ranging from the vintage sounds of HELLOWEEN and the like to a tad more progressively tinged, almost symphonic acts, whose only link to the standard power-metal aesthetic is the fact that their songs follow the traditional II-V chord progression template – to a degree. Such a tonal approach gives the songs, by default, a somewhat classically tinged flavor, as opposed to the more atonal approach of black metal, or the modal doodlings of cinematic prog. Then again, the best power-metal bands don’t give a rat’s ass about rules of this sort, but instead, throw everything in the same sonic bowl and shake it up. Before this weekend, I wasn’t really sure where TUNGSTEN would land on the vast power-metal spectrum, and, to be honest, having seen the band on stage now, I still haven’t got the faintest clue! The only thing I can say about the band with any degree of certainty is that TUNGSTEN sure as hell ain’t your average shred-happy power-metal outfit!
Someone dubbed the band’s signature sound as a cross between NIGHTWISH and RAMMSTEIN, neither of which actually represents the standard power-metal sound, curiously enough. Then again, had the band pummeled the audience with a selection of the most worn-out power-metal clichés, I would have left pretty fast. It’s just not my vibe. What these metal tricksters offered was something far more interesting, right from the get-go, as the new video single, “Joker,” set things in full gear. Indeed, the song sounded like a cross between power metal and industrial, but wait! There was more! Halfway into the song, the guitarist dropped a jaw-dropping yodeling motif! Yes, you read that correctly – the song featured yodeling! What made it even more confusing was that the guitarist was pretty damn good at it! I mean, your average thrash-metal outfit would have pulled something like this off as a piss-take, but these rogues weren’t half-assing the part – they meant serious business. I’m no vocalist, but I would reckon that yodeling is not the easiest thing to do with your vocal cords, at least if you’re meant to sound convincing. This dude nailed it like a pro. After a surprise jab like this, served right off the bat, nothing the band did could surprise me any further. I wonder what drives these power-metal acts to flirt with these types of vocal acrobatics, since this was by far not the first time something like this happened. Remember that weird FOCUS classic from 1971? “Hocus Pocus” became nothing short of an iconic prog banger for this Dutch prog squad, largely thanks to its killer guitar riffs, courtesy of Jan Akkerman, but the song is legendary for Thijs Van Leer‘s over-the-top yodeling just as well. Then, almost 30 years later, HELLOWEEN released a snappy cover rendition of it on their “Metal Jukebox” album in the late 1990s. Well, power metal as a genre has tended to go over the top from day one, so I guess this merely fits the profile. As per the conventions of the power-metal gene pool, Michael Andersson was pretty damn impressive with his belting on the lead vocals, and the rest of the band did their part equally well. As far as power-metal-esque sound goes, TUNGSTEN offered me a rather pleasant surprise. However, the next act that was scheduled for the main stage was of such legendary stature that I couldn’t stay much longer. I glanced at the time and realized that Tom G. Warrior and his merry men had already started with their special treat. So, off I went back to the main stage.
(Now, two days later, I checked that yodeling piece again on YouTube, and maybe I just have a questionable sense of humor, but it fucking rocks! The band is releasing a new album in October, which features this particular banger, so I guess I’d better keep my ears peeled for that whole endeavor!)
One of the most anticipated performances on this year’s HMF menu was set on the main stage next: Tom Gabriel Fischer‘s TRIPTYKON playing a special set of CELTIC FROST classics from yesteryear! While neither band has never really been among my number-one favorites, TRIPTYKON‘s 2014 album “Melana Chasmata” still slaps pretty damn hard, and the 1987 album classic, “Into the Pandemonium,” by CELTIC FROST is one of those timeless monoliths that also I have in my CD collection; now and then I need to put it on to reminisce on its weird, dark lustre – the thing is, I used to listen to this very album in my late teens in a galaxy far, far away with my friends as we were kicking off our very first garage band. The music we played was drastically different and had nothing whatsoever to do with metal, but albums such as this provided us with lots of inspiration to do things in our own unique way without giving a rat’s ass about what other people were thinking – just like these pioneering Swiss metal extremists. That album will be celebrating its 40th anniversary next year, and while it may sound somewhat outdated if you compare it to the metal sounds of today, it’s good to acknowledge that the modern metal aesthetic could be drastically different without the pioneering forces and metal visionaries such as Fischer (who goes by the stage name Tom G. Warrior, actually). It’s almost unreal what CELTIC FROST did in the 1980s when you think about it: thrash metal was slowly but steadily pushing glam-metal bands out of the limelight, and death metal was yet unheard of. The best description of the band that I’ve come across over the years was that CELTIC FROST was the H.P. Lovecraft of metal. There is a ring of truth in this statement, but I would go even further and call them the H.R. Giger of extreme metal – well, y’know, characterized predominantly by utterly dark melancholy and mysticism. (Giger’s artwork adorned the band’s sophomore album, “To Megatherion,” released in 1985, so maybe I just got the feeling from there…) Then again, the band is famous for not releasing the same album twice, so the vibe you get from the music differs quite a lot from album to album. The only thing that remains consistently unchanged is the overarching atmosphere of darkness. So, with all this in mind, I have to say Warrior and his TRIPTYKON lineup paid nothing short of a beautiful homage to those vintage classics. Bassist Vanja Šlajh, guitarist Victor Bullok, and drummer Hannes Grossmann owned these songs as if each of these classics were one of their own darlings. That’s the only correct way to approach a cover song, if you ask me.
The setlist focused rather prominently on CELTIC FROST‘s 1984 debut album “Morbid Tales” and their 2006 swansong “Monotheist,” neither of which I was very familiar with. I mean, it would have been nice to hear more songs from that 1987 album classic, but we did get to hear “Sorrows of the Moon” from that selection – and it’s one of the best songs on that album, so it was hard to feel genuinely pissed off. Even in this day and age, when we have literally heard all kinds of weird avant-garde stuff passed onto us as metal, these old schlagers sounded pretty unorthodox. So, it really boggled the mind to think how people must have received music like this some 40 years ago! Whether you actually liked the music or not, it’s exactly like a friend of mine said somewhere along the set: a time-warp of this sort was a must-see for its cultural anthropological significance alone! Yeah, he was 20 years younger than me and had no first-hand experience with these songs like us old grits. It sure charged the performance with a resonant layer of nostalgia that I’d exposed my delicate ears to some of these classics more than 30 years ago! So, there would be no point in trying to be objective here – it’s a no-can-do. Besides, what harm could a little nostalgia-tripping do really? So, TRIPTYKON‘s performance was nothing like your typical metal concert; it was a cosmic rip in the very fabric of time.
If TRIPTYKON‘s sonic travelogue back in time was brushed with a good dose of nostalgia for me, ELUVEITIE‘s performance provided a hefty punch of that very same elixir for my friends. My entourage at this year’s HMF was actually comprised exclusively of my old bandmates from CARVED IN ASHES. These days, it has become a habit to bump into my bandmates more frequently at concerts and festivals than we used to meet at band rehearsals, back in the day. It is fast becoming an inside joke of sorts. The thing is, these dudes were 20 years younger than me, so their source of nostalgia was very different from mine – ELUVEITIE, for instance. For me, the band was just another kick-ass folk-metal squad, while for my buddies, the band was something they had absorbed during that delicate phase on the brink of adulthood when music makes a substantially stronger impact on the musical wiring of your soul. I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about. When you’re closing in on your twenties, the music you listen to at that time will forever sound different to anything you have listened to before – or will listen to in the future. So, there we all were, four out of six of our band’s original lineup, absorbing the music of this Swiss folk-melodeath brigade that was ripping yet another hole in the very fabric of reality. The band has been around for 20-something years already, so I guess it’s safe to call them a veteran band. ELUVEITIE was formed in 2002 by Chrigel Glanzmann, who was driven by the desire to combine contemporary metal aesthetics with the musical traditions of the Celtic world, and the band has remained loyal to this original vision ever since. At Nordis, the band rolled out a cavalcade of old bangers and new songs from their latest album – “Ànv,” released last year – and it all formed one continuous feast of folk-tinged melodeath. In a way, the music resonated almost with the air of shred-happy power metal, but the instrumentation made quite a difference. It’s one thing to go diddly-diddly with a six-stringer, and another thing entirely to drop those fast little notes with traditional folk instruments, such as mandolin, Uillann pipes, tin whistles, bagpipes, hurdy gurdy, and whatnot – the live lineup seemed to be an 8-piece, and more than just the band’s primus motor turned out to be a multi-instrumentalist, so we did see all sorts of folk instruments during the show. The unique spin that this band has put on the whole folk-metal movement has prompted some people to describe their music as “The New Wave of Folk Metal.” Yeah, I can subscribe to that definition. While I couldn’t claim to have been just as well-versed in their catalog as my friends, I did recognize more than a few songs in the set, with the 2014 banger, “Call of the Mountains,” being the highlight of the set for me. For me, the song also marked a nice cue to start heading for the indoor venue for something of equal importance, while my friends stayed until the very end.
The Icelandic black-metal sensation from earlier that day, MISÞYRMING, pulled a double shift at Nordis on this special Saturday as they joined Nergal for an exclusive performance of BEHEMOTH‘s debut album “Sventhevith” from 1995. ELUVEITIE had transfixed me at the outdoor venue for maybe a little too long, because OPETH‘s headliner set was about to kick off pretty soon – and there was no way I was going to miss anything from that! So, I dropped by the Helsinki Stage 3 for just a brief moment to get a taste of black-metal perfection. I’m not familiar with the early BEHEMOTH material at all, to be honest, since the band converted me into a fanboy with the 2014 banger, “Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel.” Thus, I have no idea about the two songs that I caught from this special lineup. However, it was more than enough to make me realize where these angry young dudes had gotten a lot of their inspiration from. I mean, if their execution of those old classics was in any way faithful to the originals. I reckon they must have been, because Nergal was taking the lead. These songs sounded Intense with a capital I. I’ve never seen BEHEMOTH live, and this special treat sure made me want to check that box from my To-Do list at some point. Alas, I could not stay for longer, because the headliner on Saturday was the sole reason I wanted to haul my old ass to the festival premises in the first place. This overlap was almost as annoying as OLD MAN’S CHILD‘s slot coinciding with KING DIAMOND last year. They say we’re just about to reach some sort of technological singularity, but we still cannot be at two places simultaneously – what a fucking drag!
The Swedish prog-metal monolith, OPETH, visits this neck of the woods pretty frequently, but we don’t really mind, do we? In recent years, I’ve seen the band a good few times, and every time they have blown my mind to smithereens, so I was stoked to see what evil shenanigans these rogues would have hidden up their sleeve this time, and – oh, boy! – the band did not let me down! The band had kept the video projections from last year’s The Last Will and Testament Tour, and they sure added a nice touch to the band’s cavalcade of proggy death-metal greatness. I’d never seen the band headline a metal festival before, but they handled it like pros – well, did we really expect something less from THIS bunch?! Once again, the setlist was a mind-blowing mixture of the band’s greatest bangers and a couple of surprises. Last year, OPETH played a song from their sophomore studio album “Morningrise,” which celebrated its 30th anniversary earlier this year, about a month ago. So, I was kinda expecting to hear something from that album, but instead, the band revisited their 1999 album “Still Life” with the song “Godhead’s Lament.” I’m sure the band’s longtime fans were more than pleased. I was introduced to the band through “Blackwater Park,” around 2005, so I do not dare to call myself a longtime fan just yet – even though I’ve been a fanboi for more than 20 years. Then, I would say the song “Hjärtat Vet Vad Handen Gör,” from the Swedish version of 2019’s “In Cauda Venenum,” was a nice surprise just as well. I’m pretty sure the band, jovial tricksters as they are known to be, opted for the Swedish version in particular because of the ever-ongoing love/hate relationship between Finns and Swedes (especially about sports). Yeah, once again the band’s primus motor, Mikael Åkerfeldt, introduced the band by saying something like, “We are OPETH, and we come from Sweden, the superior ice-hockey nation.” He was quick to add that he doesn’t even give a shit about ice hockey, but I reckon that legendary ice-hockey championship final between Finland and Sweden in 1995 in Stockholm must have traumatized the whole country. Seriously, though, Åkerfeldt is easily one of the funniest frontmen in the whole metal universe along with Devin Townsend.
Speaking of special treats, which seemed to be an ongoing theme at this year’s HMF extravaganza, OPETH offered yet another surprise – a genuine cherry on top! The band played a real rarity, “Hex Omega,” from 2008’s “Watershed” album. I don’t think I had ever heard that song played live before! On the other hand, “Windowpane” from the band’s mellow 2003 album “Damnation” always feels like a special treat, because the song is such a gem – anything from that album feels like receiving a warm hug. That masterpiece album will turn big years in just 2 years, so maybe the band should embark on a special 25th anniversary tour and play it from start to finish, yeah? They did it with “Ghost Reveries” when the album celebrated its 10th anniversary, and that performance was something that I shall never forget. Speaking of which, we got one killer track from that beast of an album as well – “The Grand Conjuration,” an old OPETH live staple. Why the hell not? Those iconic riffs still slap hard! The setlist included two bangers from the latest album, too – “§1” and “§7,” respectively – and this haunting live experience was brought to a close with the best damn closer of all time, “Deliverance,” like usual. Even Åkerfeldt himself said that the band has played this song to death, but its outro is still the best goddamn way to close a concert on a high note. The band knows it. The fans know it. It’s the whole truth and nothing but. Yeah, we have jokingly entertained the thought sometimes that OPETH could close their set with some other song, but like what? I’m pretty sure that replacing that monolith of a song with something else would skew the cosmic balance irrevocably. Who knows what would happen?! We might start to like mumble rap, for instance! Hell, no! The set was pure perfection just as it was. Listening to the band’s signature mixture of prog and death metal at such a late hour at the heart of a Saturday night in Helsinki is easily going to become one of my fondest memories from this year’s Hellsinki Metal Festival. OPETH pulled perhaps their best damn live performance I’d seen in years! Along with PARADISE LOST, another veteran bunch with more than 30 years of greatness under their belt, OPETH showcased that old is the new black. The festival lineup was pure gold from start to finish, but these two bands towered over the rest by virtue of offering us their very best, which was simply something out of this world. Seeing them both on this very special Saturday sure felt like winning the lottery – twice on the same day!
I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to calibrate my head for the last band on the menu – Norwegian black-metal pioneers, THE KOVENANT, set to start any minute now inside the hall… I mean, OPETH‘s set was nothing short of a pre-emptive strike when it comes to a musical knockout of seismic proportions. Well, what the hell, we were supposed to meet with our band’s vocalist somewhere downtown after the festival, so I wasn’t going home just yet, anyway. Besides, these legends were something like a wild card for me – I’d never heard a single song by them. When they started in the 1990s, I was too deep in the prog waters to give a shit about the abrasive new sound emerging from Norway, and from 2010 onward, up until 2024, the band was rather inactive. However, even I was aware that this bunch had never been your typical evil-worshipping black-metal band. Their seminal “Nexus Polaris” album challenged practically every existing black-metal stereotype when it came out in 1998, so I was more than intrigued to finally check these cosmic rogues out. When I descended the stairs into the dark indoor venue, the first song of the set was in full blast already – and it certainly made it clear that this band was indeed not some stereotypical blast-beat machine! My first impression was something closer to the weird sci-fi stuff from ARCTURUS – y’know, symphonic-power-black-I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-this-is-supposed-to-be metal. I’m not sure about the band’s current lineup, but as far as I know, they used to have musicians from bands such as ARCTURUS, DIMMU BORGIR, and CARPE TENEBRUM in the ranks. So, I guess the wild mixture of symphonic, progressive, and cosmic elements stemmed originally from there. Sure, in this day and age, it’s nothing new, as bands such as IGORRR have taken the formula to even further extremes, but this band was cooking eclectic sonic concoctions of this sort, like, 30 years ago!
That 1998 album classic has been hailed as the best “non-black-metal-sounding” black-metal album of all time, and I guess the band knows it, too: they played every song from the album in the same running order. The album only has eight songs, so the rest of the setlist threw in a few bonuses – like the set closer, “Monarch of the Mighty Darkness,” from the 1997 debut album, “In Times Before the Light,” which was re-recorded and re-released a few years later. I have seen someone describe “Nexus Polaris” as an invitation to a trip through the cosmos – and that description applied to the band’s live performance just as well. If there is such a thing as “cosmic black metal,” THE KOVENANT‘s music fits the bill down to a tee. If you have seen the movie Interstellar, it has this scene where the protagonist is Matrix-diving through the very fabric of time and space – if this live performance did not make you feel like that, you were probably not listening. As I’d been hoping over the weekend to have the ability to astral project – in order not to miss a moment from any band’s performance that was going on at the same time – I guess this weird musical experience was the closest thing I could ever have to something like that. It was weird and fantastic!
All in all, both days rolled out 16 great live performances! Alas, I missed one, but I reckon 31 bands in 2 days is something to remember! The Hellsinki Metal Festival has profiled its heavy banquet quite ingeniously somewhere between the more mainstreamish menu of the Tuska Festival and the more extreme and more prominently black-metal-tinged Steelfest. I mean, some of the bands have played at both Nordis and Suvilahti, while some other bands could easily play at both Nordis and Willatehdas, Hyvinkää – but I guess there aren’t that many bands you could see playing at all of these festivals. The balance between the up-and-coming metal comets and veteran bands is just bloody excellent, too. Whoever is doing the bookings for HMF must have some sort of sixth sense when it comes to picking just the right bands at the right time. If you looked at this year’s menu, for instance, the veteran department was comprised exclusively of bands that were in excellent shape – almost as if they were living their golden years again. Then, the newcomers were just as exclusively from the upper echelons of their respective genres. Now, I have a shit-ton of albums that I need to check out, written in my little black notebook. Hellsinki Metal Festival did it again! I haven’t really touched on the non-musical attractions at the festival too much, but that’s just because I was too busy vibing to the bands. The only thing that I was left longing for was a new PARADISE LOST T-shirt. For some reason, the merch booth didn’t have any – and I was later told that it may have had something to do with the political bullshit concerning Brexit. Otherwise, everything worked smoothly – no long lines to the food vendors or toilets. No disturbances of any kind. Then again, the metal crowd is famous for not acting like total assholes – if you want to see that sort of thing, you have to go to some mainstream rock festival, or better yet – to the Tangomarkkinat, which is targeted exclusively for Boomers. As a festival experience, HMF was top of the class in all aspects – just like it was last year when I experienced it for the first time. So, am I coming back next year? Are you kidding me? Of course I am! See you all at the Hellsinki Metal Festival 2027! Cheers!
Written by Jani Lehtinen
