Dark River Festival in Kotka is one of the annual highlights of our festival season, so naturally, we had to go back to Kotka for the 2024 edition, held from August 8th–10th. This year’s lineup featured an impressive array of bands such as WARMEN, MARIANAS REST, EXODUS, MNEMIC, BLOODRED HOURGLASS, and KATATONIA, creating a diverse and exciting musical experience. As always, the festival offers a perfect blend of intimate atmosphere and top-tier performances, making it a standout event in Finland’s summer festival circuit. Dark River Festival’s second day on August 9th, 2024, continued with bands like OMNIVORTEX, MARIANAS REST, HANGING GARDEN, RYTMIHÄIRIÖ, ASSEMBLE THE CHARIOTS, MISTER MISERY, HAVUKRUUNU, MOKOMA, MANITOU, and EXODUS.
The second day opened the Inferno stage with OMNIVORTEX, delivering crushing, high-energy death metal with something I found impressive: their drummer doing vocals! My closest friend in the States is a drummer, and has expressed to me how difficult it is to sing while playing drums in a normal tempo rock band, much less a brutal death metal band like this one! Kudos to them for that.
On the main stage, MARIANAS REST brought doomy, melodic metal vibes with seamless song-to-song transitions, requiring no talking between tracks. I thoroughly enjoyed their set. On the Inferno Stage, HANGING GARDEN continued in the same vein, blending clean female vocals with harsh male growls. It was a nice contrast, adding depth to the day’s performances.
Next up was RYTMIHÄIRIÖ with an explosive, high-energy set that reminded me of a Finnish PANTERA; but, I was told that the nuance of the band’s lyrics were unfortunately lost on me as a foreigner and a bit of a teetotaller. Nevertheless, I could see that the crowd engagement was high and many in the audience touted Gambina, the same drink the band sings about.
ASSEMBLE THE CHARIOTS didn’t leave much of an impression, apart from their funkily dancing frontman and a symphonic metal vibe. MISTER MISERY, hailing from Sweden, followed them with a set that took me through a range of opinions—at first I found them too silly, with cheesy lyrics and a sound reminiscent of the musical numbers of a Tim Burton film, but they grew on me as I approached the stage and saw them in fantastic costumes, just having a blast and enjoying the fun of their music. That’s something I really love to see in a stage performance.
HAVUKRUUNU brought the mood back down with glorious folk metal and Viking chants. Then MOKOMA and MANITOU, neither of which left much of an impression on me. At this point, at least for me, it had all started to sound the same. MOKOMA laid down some solid Finnish metal, but I found MANITOU a bit too power metal for my tastes. Wrapping up Friday night in Kotka was old-school American thrashers, EXODUS. Thrash is unfortunately not my style, but it was nice to see how well-received they were by the crowd, and they put on a good show.
Text and photo by Charlotte Varboncoeur
