There’s this nonchalant saying in Finland, “Hevi on paskimmillaankin parasta,” which roughly translates as “Even at its shittiest, heavy metal is the best.” It is not even a matter of opinion but a cold, hard fact. So, you can only imagine how elated we all must have felt after the banquet of class A metal that was on offer on the first day of Hellsinki Metal Festival 2025 because, let’s face it, the festival lineup was pure gold! I was even more hyped up about Saturday’s lineup because I had not seen CULT OF LUNA on stage for a long time, and then, this day marked the very first time for me to see ENSLAVED in action! These avant-garde Norwegians have been consistently amazing, probably from day one, but for me, since their 2012 outing “Riitiir,” so this Saturday was a big day for me! Friday had also served a few aces that completely blew my mind. I’m looking at you, DECESSUS and DECAPITATED! So, I was mentally prepared to experience something of that sort on the second festival day as well – and it didn’t let me down.
I arrived at the festival premises in good time, so I decided to chat up some random metalheads and ask them about Friday’s highlights. KING DIAMOND had obviously been THE thing. Then, I discovered that KANONENFIEBER has quite a few fans already in Finland, despite the obvious language barrier. It’s just another proof that music is a universal language in itself. Then, those two aforementioned bands starting with the letter D popped up quite often, too. Younger metalheads seemed to have been quite familiar with DECAPITATED already, but the Chilean bunch, DECESSUS, had taken everybody by pleasant surprise.
Saturday’s metal banquet kicked off with one of the most promising rising stars in the Finnish metal scene – LUNA KILLS. My Editor-in-Chief tipped me off about the band already last year when they played at Tuska, but then, their slot coincided with OPETH, so I’m afraid they didn’t have a chance. Now, their side-stage slot coincided with that of the Belgian gore-grind act BRUTAL SPHINCTER playing inside the hall. While the latter seemed quite intriguing and interesting for their provocative and satirical style, I thought it was high time to finally check out what the fuss about LUNA KILLS was all about. I mean, as hilarious as BRUTAL SPHINCTER‘s music sounded on Spotify when I checked them out in advance, having slept maybe 5 hours max, I didn’t think I was in the right mental state for gore-grind just yet. No, I didn’t have a hangover – I arrived by car on both festival days. However, I preferred a soft awakening rather than being shocked awake by a sonic punch right to my private parts. So, LUNA KILLS it was.
Well, it didn’t take very long to realize why the band is making waves. LUNA KILLS conquered the stage like a flash of lightning with their modern take on nu metal. Their frontwoman, Lotta Ruutiainen, soon proved not only a commanding, world-class vocalist but a kick-ass performer overall. Her vocal range went all the way from those Lana Del Rey-esque whispers to utterly delicious hard-rock belting. That alone would mean nothing, of course, if the songs weren’t such catchy and intense bursts of emotion. Yeah, I get now why everyone has been buzzing about this band for some time. The setlist included quite a few songs from their new album “Deathmatch,” released earlier this year. A few songs stood out – the somewhat IN THIS MOMENT-like set opener, “Deep Cuts,” from 2023, and the Lana Del Rey-vibed banger from the new album, “Fever Dream.” Yeah, the band sure made me feel a bit dumb for not checking them out on stage any sooner, but maybe next time, don’t play a festival slot that clashes with OPETH, yes? It might actually become harder to see these metal rogues in Finland, because I’m pretty sure that they will soon start to make waves abroad as well. The new album slaps pretty hard, but it is the live setting where the band shines. The set ended with “Burn the World With Me,” a new song that resonated quite nicely with the air of “That’s the Spirit”-era BRING ME THE HORIZON. I’d say this was quite a spectacular start for day two at the Hellsinki Metal Festival.
Next up on the main stage, LÄHIÖBOTOX was yet another killer band that I had managed to avoid seeing in action up to this point. I had a feeling that the band would kick ass, though. How could they not, given that their music comes off like the angry, Finnish cousin of BODY COUNT? If they cranked up the funk factor a little bit more, they could even be the Finnish equivalent of vintage RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. In 2025, mixing rap and metal should be nothing new, I guess – hey, ANTHRAX did that already in the 1980s! Somehow, it still isn’t the most popular thing to do in Finland, not in the metal scene, let alone in the hip-hop community. So, this Eastern-Helsinki bunch is something of a trailblazer in this country – I wouldn’t count the piss-takes on hip-hop conducted by some metal bands over the years. Well, y’know, if you want to make a funny B-side or a curiosity track for the proverbial “Rarities” compilation, you can always have a piss-take on rap or reggae – it works every time! This bunch is something else, though. They are the real deal – as their high-octane live performance at Nordis proved beyond a shadow of doubt. This type of music – bouncy and beefy metal riffs paired with a somewhat PUBLIC ENEMY and BEASTIE BOYS-like rapping – works particularly well on stage: it is engaging both physically and emotionally. The setlist leaned quite heavily on the 2020 debut, “Rikkinäinen Suomi,” the title track of which opened the set, and their most recent album, “Surullinen Tapaus – Sellaista On Vapaus,” released last year. There was only one song, “Lähiöni Tuote,” from “Itä-Metal,” I think. The album is pretty kick-ass, so I was expecting more, but on the other hand, the new songs sounded pretty damn good, so I can’t complain. Some of those new songs featured MC Respektor from the Finnish rap bunch, SMC LÄHIÖROTAT, just like on those album versions. The closer, “Saunan Takana,” from the debut, proved a real banger on stage. In January this year, the band won the Vuoden Metalli (Metal of the Year) award at the Indie Awards 2025 – for a bloody good reason, too. Although some of the old-school metalheads can sometimes be rather vocal about their disdain for rap, LÄHIÖBOTOX was warmly welcomed by the audience at Nordis. Then again, for anyone who had bothered to come to check out the band, it was plain as day that the band meant business. So, if the day had started with a blast delivered by LUNA KILLS, these homeboys made damn sure it also continued on a high note. LÄHIÖBOTOX kicked some serious ass.
Next, I found it extremely difficult to make up my mind about whether to check out the Scottish slam-death-metal act, PARTY CANNON, or the Canadian deathcore squad, ANGELMAKER. The thing is, none of these subgenres is exactly my cup of tea – or so I thought. I decided it might be best to check out a little bit of both, starting with a bit of Scottish-variety death-metal absurdity. I wasn’t sure what it was that made a death-metal band a slam act, in particular, apart from the fact that the music should be extremely intense and layered with liberal amounts of those porcine grunts. When I entered the indoor venue, I was greeted by a violent onslaught of groovy death-metal breakdowns and, yeah, those bestial vocal sounds. I’ve been hanging around with all sorts of musicians for most of my life, and I must say: metal musicians have the sickest sense of humor of them all – but in all the good ways, of course. This band sure did their damnedest to further prove that assertion correct. Slam death metal is humor music of the highest caliber, no doubt. I’m not exactly sure what songs the band played, but later, revisiting the band’s music on Spotify, these Scottish tricksters seem to have their tongue firmly attached to their cheek. There’s no way they’re being serious – a case in point: their latest single “Thirst Trap.” I cannot say if they played it in the first half of their set or not before I left. They might as well have. This is exactly how you should make humor music: you don’t fuck around, but rather deliver everything ultra-tightly like a pro. Hey, even Frank Zappa had some of the most talented musicians in his band – and then he made them do fart sounds on stage. I think the best way to describe PARTY CANNON‘s absurdus maximus is to quote a line from the above song, “Holy fuck is this wrong, but holy hell is it erotic!” I guess it is, if you’re kinky enough.
While deathcore isn’t exactly my go-to genre when it comes to metal, I wanted to check out the veteran bunch, ANGELMAKER, because some of their songs had come off as rather pleasant riff-burgers to my ear on Spotify. They say that if you taste a food dish something like 14 times, you begin to like it, even though you might have initially found it less than appealing to your taste. I guess I was beginning to reach that limit. I skipped LORNA SHORE‘s headliner performance at Tuska this year because there was something even more intriguing on offer at the same time, but I checked it out afterwards online – and if fucking slapped! I’ve tried to give other bands a chance as well but quite often, to my chagrin, I have realized that, instead of actual songs, these bands write collections of breakdowns on top of which their vocalist is attempting to break the world record of both how low you can reach with your gutturals and how high you can go with your pig squeals. To give credit where it is due, ANGELMAKER has proper songs in their catalog – and not just any kind of songs but pretty good bangers, too. Sure, the breakdowns are there as well as the inhuman-sounding gutturals, but what I like best about the band is the way they mix atmospheric passages into their brutal riffages. Now, I’ve been listening to a few of their songs on repeat – “Relinquished” and “Suffer Forever” – and I cannot be sure whether I heard these bangers at Nordis or if I’ve just been hyperfixating on them for too long at home. This sublime mix of brutal riffs and atmospheric, almost postrock-ish plateaus was what caught my attention at the premises, though. Yeah, sure, they are not the first deathcore band to do this, but in addition to LORNA SHORE, these Canadian rogues do it exceptionally well, so that it sounds like music and not like an exercise in showing off. I’m pretty sure that none of my friends had it in their bingo cards that I would take pleasure in listening to deathcore in my 50s. That’s just the beauty of metal festivals – you find all sorts of new bands! On the downside, if you’re old-school enough and prefer to have your music collection in some obsolete physical format, like vinyl or CD, you will soon run out of money and storage space. Wives are notoriously bad at warming up to the idea of restyling your living room in order to fit yet another haul of music albums from bands you found during the festival season. The more I listen to these Canucks, the more I like them – all thanks to their spirited performance at Hellsinki Metal Festival.
The next act on the main stage was nothing short of a legendary grindcore act from Birmingham, the place where heavy metal was born – NAPALM DEATH. I think this bunch was the very band responsible for the genre’s name, “grindcore.” While I must admit that I was never much of a true fan of this particular style some 30 years ago, there was a short period in the early 1990s when my friends and I had a funny habit of torturing our non-metal-listening peers by playing NAPALM DEATH or NAKED CITY to them without a warning. Then, witnessing them having a meltdown because of the music, we laughed our asses off. So, it was nigh impossible not to feel nostalgic to see this noisy bunch on stage after all these years – besides, they did have a good few bangers, some of which we heard at Nordis, too. The music was mostly “horrible noise,” just like the band’s vocalist Barney Greenway described it at some point. Okay, to be fair, the songs were charged with lots of punk elements and also death metal, not just plain noise. If a violent Tourette seizure could be condensed into music, NAPALM DEATH might be a rather close match. Not only was the music intense, but the band is legendary for its sociopolitical lyrics as well. The band has never been afraid to take a stand for things they consider important, and Greenway made sure to point things out in between songs, too, eliciting rounds of applause now and then. His scathing take on organized religion got people cheering, in particular. Amidst all the angry noise, the almost mellow banger from 1996, “Cold Forgiveness,” stood out rather nicely. Then, of course, the DEAD KENNEDYS cover, “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” got people to sing along to that iconic chorus. Oh, yes – there was something truly endearing in witnessing dozens of metalheads singing, “Nazi punk, nazi punk, nazi punk, fuck off!” It was beautiful. I have no words to describe it.
Because both NAPALM DEATH and ENSLAVED overlapped with the Swedish industrial goths, ALFAHANNE, I had no other option than to skip them entirely. It was a bummer, really. Judging by the few songs that I checked out on Spotify, the band seemed pretty damn interesting, but there was no way I was going to miss either one of these legends. Maybe next time? I hope they pulled a big enough crowd to the indoor venue to grant them, say, a club date in Helsinki later this year. How about that? What made them seem even more interesting was that the band sings in both English and Swedish. There are not many bands, apart from KENT and OPETH, that have made an impression in both languages.
ENSLAVED kicked off almost immediately on the side stage after NAPALM DEATH had wrapped up their show on the main stage. That sure wasn’t the easiest slot to play, not after such a brutal punch-up, just like the ENSLAVED bassist-vocalist Grutle Kjellson commented: it was like having to ski-jump after Matti Nykänen during his prime. However, these black-metal sages delivered a show that was just as sublime as I had expected it to be; sure, I’m about as biased as a fanboy can be after having waited quite a long time to finally see ENSLAVED on stage, but my entourage also agreed, even though such avant-garde black metal wasn’t exactly their cup of tea. The setlist was a nice cross-section of the band’s plus-30-year career. Three songs were from their latest “Heimdal” album from two years ago; otherwise, the songs were hand-picked from both their early, more black-metal-tinted endeavors and the slightly more progressive albums released in the last 15 years or so. I didn’t recognize all of the songs, not at first, but I reckon some of the live arrangements differed slightly from the album versions. The show ended with “Allfǫðr Oðinn” from the band’s first-ever EP, released in 1993 and reissued in 2018, which was a nice touch. Their progressive 2012 monolith album “Riitiir” wasn’t played at all, and the progressive gem, “Utgard,” was visited only with the song “Homebound,” which came pretty early in the set. Well, it is one of the band’s best songs ever, so I’m not complaining. The band has sculpted their unique personality in the music from day one, so the old stuff flowed quite seamlessly into the new songs and vice versa – the live renditions had not really been that much tampered with, to be honest; I just don’t know the early stuff by heart – yet. Now that I finally got to see how great ENSLAVED is live, I ought to be careful not to miss them the next time they come to Finland. For me, this was one of the absolute highlights of Sunday, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Not only was the setlist pure ear-candy, but the live execution was top of the class. The band boasts three excellent vocalists, and the interplay between Kjellson‘s harsh black-metal croaks and the clean vocals by both keyboardist Hakon Vinje and drummer Iver Sandøy worked like (black) magic on stage. Don’t you just hate when a band’s vocalist(s) sound pristine on their albums but suck ass on stage? Well, these Norwegian sages needn’t worry in that respect! The clean passages in “Homebound,” for example, sure did send goosebumps all over! Fuck, I just love these guys! An hour with ENSLAVED was nowhere near enough.
Next, it was time to make hard choices again. Japanese avant-garde black-metal sensation SIGH was set to play inside the hall at the same time as the French metalcore comet, LANDMVRKS, was about to kick off on the main stage. Sure, their fanbases probably don’t mix much, but I would have preferred to see a whole set from both. So, I opted for a 50/50 solution, starting with the French. Metalcore isn’t even my favorite metal subgenre, but I do appreciate a good metalcore act when I come across one. I noticed right off the bat that the band members seemed very, very young – I mean, like 9th-grader-young! Maybe the impression stemmed from their urban street chic attire, I don’t know. The band was founded in 2014, so there’s no way they were THAT young?! Well, whatever – the music slapped pretty hard! It came off as a slightly bouncier version of vintage BRING ME THE HORIZON, which happens to be one of my guilty pleasures. Before I headed inside the icehall, I noticed also that the band wasn’t afraid to throw in all sorts of personal quirks – like pop hooks and rapping in French. Judging by these few songs only, I would say this French bunch definitely belongs to the upper echelons of metalcore: their music is youthfully energetic, catchy as hell, and those solid riffs are layered with all sorts of subtle nuances that give them a unique air of their own. Yeah, I’m an old shit who’s not supposed to like this type of music, but… When nobody’s looking, I might have to check out their four albums on Spotify, maybe even get some of them in my record collection. Just don’t tell anyone.
Nonetheless, I wasn’t going to miss the Japanese black-metal special at the indoor venue, so I left somewhere around the middle of LANDMVRKS‘ set. I read somewhere that SIGH was founded in the late 1980s, already, so I guess I could use the moniker “Legend” by all means. I have done some digging into Japanese music, albeit mostly outside metal music, and I’ve noticed that there is almost always one thing that these bands have in common, regardless of the genre. The music is typically great and layered with an utterly unique Japanese twist, be it techno (like Ken Ishii), jazz (like the acid jazz of UNITED FUTURE ORGANISATION, or the jazz legend, Hidenobu Kalta Otsuki), or post-rock (like MONO). Sometimes the vibe comes from the ethnic scales used, like in the case of Marty Friedman– he lives in Japan, nowadays, so I would count his solo material into this category, too. Sometimes it is much harder to pinpoint what exactly that “twist” is. It didn’t take long for me to realize SIGH belonged to that latter category. My friend said the music sounded quite like the black-metal version of DRAGONFORCE, for me, the impression was closer to something like those legendary Nintendo boss-battle fanfares filtered through a black-metal prism. I mean that as a compliment, mind you. Koji Kondo, the guy responsible for some of the most iconic Super Mario and Zelda tunes, was a pure musical genius. Then again, DRAGONFORCE isn’t that far from those classics, in terms of style, to be honest. The point was that SIGH was something neither of us would forget very easily. Then, as if the music wasn’t exotic enough, the Japanese metal couple, the masterminds behind the band’s music, had brought their kids along for the show. It was pretty wild to see how the younger of the siblings provoked the metal crowd into frenzy from the stage by punching air with both fists – and before the show was brought to a close, we also saw a flaming samurai sword. Of course! I had briefly browsed through some of the band’s songs on Spotify before the festival, but this mind-blowing extravaganza convinced me to revisit them shortly after as well. Their most recent album seems to be a re-recorded version of an earlier album entitled “Hangman’s Hymn” – both are available on Spotify, and they’re both solid black-metal gems!
At this point, I guess I could write a few words about all that other stuff there was on offer at Hellsinki Metal Festival this year. Even though, for me, none of it was really that important – apart from the food vendors – it’s nice that people can find something interesting to do when there are maybe not-so-interesting bands on stage. For an insufferable music nerd, a situation like that is never going to happen, of course. So, inside the hall, there was a Brutal Bazaar Expo area where you could buy all sorts of things – music, band merch, crafts, you name it. There was also a walk-in tattoo parlor. Then, on the other side of the building, there was the Dark Art Gallery, exhibiting works by a wide range of Finnish and international artists. I actually found the exhibition by accident when I was looking for something else, and I had to stop and study the art; I spotted a few artworks that I might have wanted to hang on my living room wall, too. I heard that there was a festival sauna somewhere as well. Obviously, with all these festival features, it was nigh impossible not to draw some comparisons to Tuska. The Brutal Bazaar was much like Tuska Expo. Both festivals have the sauna, and so forth. I can’t say which festival did it better since I came here exclusively for the music (and some food). The Food Court was outside and offered a basic range of street foods with more or less ethnic leanings. Some complained that the size of the portions did not justify the price, but I’ve seen worse. I guess the younger metal demographic had no idea what it was like to have something to eat at rock festivals, say, in 1992… I played it safe and went for some kebab and ice-cream, and it wasn’t too bad, not at all. The beer vendors were rather universally praised, though. I came by car, so I had to keep it moderate. Overall, I didn’t notice any major problems anywhere. Things seemed to go pretty smoothly. The only small thing that started to annoy a little was the scheduling of the bands. For the most part, the bands that played simultaneously weren’t that much targeted for the same metal demographic, if you don’t take into account that OLD MAN’S CHILD‘s slot coincided with KING DIAMOND quite a bit. For the “Anything goes” type, things were a bit more frustrating, like always.
This overlap issue was the very reason I didn’t catch much of Michael Schenker‘s performance: CULT OF LUNA started at the indoor venue halfway into his special “My Years with UFO” set – and I wanted to secure a good spot relatively close to the stage, so I left a good bit earlier. I’m not very familiar with the vintage hard rock of UFO, apart from the few obvious classics, such as “Doctor Doctor” and “Lights Out,” the first of which came pretty early on in the set. Usually, it works rather nicely in the festival setting, and this occasion was no exception to the rule. There’s no denying that Schenker is a living legend when it comes to guitarists. Last year, he released an album bearing the same title as this tour, and that 11-track bonanza featured such big names as Axl Rose, Joey Tempest, and Slash – that says something of his stature. Still, the Swedish post-metal overlords were set to start in no time at all, considering that I had to haul my weary ass to the venue before it got too packed. For me, CULT OF LUNA was one of the two actual headliners of Saturday, even before I had heard a single note – and the show that they pulled only further confirmed this.
For some reason, I had not seen my favorite Swedes for 15 fucking years! I heard later that they’ve been taking it easy of late, in terms of touring, but still. That show they pulled at Tavastia, Helsinki, in 2010, still ranks in the Top 10 of the best live shows that I’ve ever seen. Back then, they started the evening with the gargantuan, 17-minute epic, “Dark City, Dead Man,” from their 2006 album “Somewhere Along the Highway.” This time, the opener may have lacked in song length, but not in emotional impact. I guess I was too immersed in the music, because now I can’t say for sure whether the opener was “Cold Burn” from their latest album or “I: The Weapon,” from the haunting 2013 album, “Vertikal.” They both came pretty early in the set, perhaps as the first and second, even. So, instead of one 17-minute post-metal trance, we got two 9-minute sermons, which sounds like a rather good deal to me. The setlist seemed to lean quite heavily toward that 2013 post-metal classic, which I couldn’t really oppose since I had never heard these songs played live! Still, I couldn’t help but feel more than slightly emotional when the band played the 12-minute sludge eargasm, “Ghost Trail,” from their 2008 album “Eternal Kingdom.” That Tavastia show ended with this epic, now it came somewhere around the middle of the set, but the impact was practically the same – goosebumps and shivers, you know the drill. The venue seemed quite packed, like when DECAPITATED played the day before, so it was a pretty good move to come early. Once again, the band featured two drummers, which indeed did justice to the tribal trance feel of the songs. I was transfixed for the whole duration of the set, which was nowhere near enough, obviously. The band started almost 15 minutes late, so this 45-minute-or-something show felt way too short. Then again, I could listen to this band for 10 hours straight. Like usual, vocalist Johannes Persson did not say a single word during the set – the band just came on stage, blew our minds, and left us trembling in awe. The usual stuff that metal bands say to the audience, American metal bands, in particular – y’know, “Rip the fucking pit open!” or “Make some fucking noise!” – just wouldn’t work with music like this. Befittingly, the set was brought to a close with the haunting 10-minute epic, “In Awe Of,” from that 2013 album. That was absolutely the most soul-shattering and mind-blowing show of the second festival day. Maybe CULT OF LUNA should have been the headliner, just saying. Of course, that’s something a fanboy like me would say, but my friend was also rendered speechless after the show, so…
After a show like that, it took some considerable time to reorient my thoughts to be able to enjoy the hardcore of HATEBREED. They were yet another band with more than 20 years of history – and you could tell by the tight delivery that these guys weren’t born to play yesterday. Sure, I was vaguely aware of them, but since punk derivatives had never been my cup of tea exactly, I wasn’t familiar with their music, to be honest. Now, listening to them for the first time ever, my initial impression was that their music would be a perfect fit for working out in the gym – aggressive but uplifting. Here and there, it sounded almost as though the band were going to go full-on nu-metal next, but then they made a swift U-turn back to their thrash-laden hardcore riffing. Groovy little bastards – I liked that. Vocalist Jamey Jasta had quite a commanding stage presence, too. Maybe, if I were 30 years younger, I would have elbowed my way into the pit area – there was a time, back in the 1990s, when I went through a brief side affair with the punk bands of the era despite being a devoted prog snob. You’ve got to have some guilty pleasures, right? Age was just a number, I knew, but I was still quite goosebumpey from CULT OF LUNA’s performance, so I was quite happy to listen to the band from a safe distance. Besides, the pit seemed to be doing just fine without me – the crowd was going full-on apeshit! Overall, HATEBREED left quite a good impression, so while I might not exactly rush to buy all of their records next, I could easily imagine myself enjoying their music in a live setting like this in the future as well. Judging by the crowd, the band seemed to have quite a solid fanbase in Finland, which didn’t really surprise me – the band proved they were the crème de la crème of their genre.
Next, on the side stage, Swedish black-metal behemoth, MARDUK, delivered an intense black-metal punch-up of the caliber that the word “intense” didn’t suffice to describe it. I think I need to be upfront and confess that these guys were yet another bunch of black-metal legends that I wasn’t that familiar with, although my son, who’s into black metal, had put in a few good words for the band. The set kicked off with the song, “Werwolf,” and it instantly triggered flashbacks of QWÄLEN‘s performance on Friday, probably because of the punk-laced, organized chaos. At some point, I decided to sneak inside the hall to catch a few songs of ME AND THAT MAN, but when I came back outside, MARDUK was still firing with all cylinders; they sure cut no slack with their vehement blast beats and buzzsaw riffs. The band’s drummer, Simon Schilling, who’s also known as Bloodhammer, was truly phenomenal! Toward the end of the set, they played one of their most iconic classics, “Panzer Division Marduk” – the very song that my son had praised as one of their best. What can I say? The band was truly ferocious.
When I dropped by the indoor stage, ME AND THAT MAN had just kicked off their set with “Run With the Devil.” Amidst all this heavy-metal mayhem, it was rather weird to hear country music all of a sudden! Okay, the band’s code of conduct wasn’t exactly GARTH BROOKS but rather something closer to Southern Gothic à la Nick Cave, but still. They had lured quite a few metalheads to the venue, but I guess it helped that the band’s frontman was Nergal from the Polish black-metal juggernaut, BEHEMOTH. I was only familiar with the song, “My Church Is Black,” from the band’s 2017 outing “Songs of Love and Death,” and it came on next. Whether or not you liked country music, I was sure no one could resist when Nergal sang the lines, “My church is black, my Christ is cold, my cross is pale, hell is my home.”It almost seemed as though these two leading Finnish metal festivals were competing against one another in bringing on artists that would surely make the average thrash-vested metalhead go, “What the actual fuck?!” Tuska has excelled with all sorts of synth-pop and electronica acts of late, and HMF went one louder with this treat. Of course, there is always some wild tangent relating these acts to the heavy metal paradigm, if nothing else, then the overarching sense of gloom, at least. Some metalheads don’t like it, but I think it’s just great that there is the option to step out of our comfort zone, big time. After a few songs, I headed back outside to catch the end of MARDUK‘s set, though. I reasoned it wouldn’t hurt to be in a good spot, close to the main stage, before they wrapped up their sulphuric performance. I couldn’t help but notice that the festival area seemed quite packed already. After the festival, I read that HMF had pulled 16,000 metalheads to the Nordis area during the weekend. I’m not sure about the capacity of the premises, but judging by the size of the crowd on both days, I would bet it was pretty close to the max. That’s not a small feat, considering the Tuska weekend, the Friday of which hit a new record, took place only a month before this metal extravaganza. For quite a few old-school connoisseurs, HMF seemed to be the number one metal festival this year, thanks to the nothing short of a stunning festival lineup – even though I heard some metalheads saying that this year’s Hellsinki Metal Festival wasn’t even as legend-ridden as in the previous two years.
Speaking of which, the headliner of Saturday must have been one of the most legendary acts that I’d ever seen. I mean, now that MOTÖRHEAD has been out of the question for 10 years already, VENOM was probably the closest thing to a living legend of that caliber. Their music has never really sat quite right with me – I’m a prog snob, remember – but I do recall the first time that I heard “Black Metal.” I chanced to see them on TV when I was in the sixth grade in school, so it must have been around 1985. That was 40 fucking years ago! Needless to say, when the show kicked off with that iconic song, it felt utterly unreal. I’m still not a fan, but VENOM sure seemed to have a lot of them gathered before the main stage, singing along and punching the air. To be honest, I was never really a fan of MOTÖRHEAD, either, but if it were still possible, I would definitely go and see them on stage. I guess, with legends of this sort, it is not just the band you’re witnessing – it’s a peek beyond the layers of time, or something. Musically, I think VENOM and MOTÖRHEAD were like cousins – loudmouthed, thrashy, and obnoxious, perhaps, but kindred spirits all the same. Without their contributions to metal music, the scene would look quite different today, I reckon. At some point, I decided to sneak inside the hall, though VENOM was still set to play for a good while. The bonus treat set to kick off at midnight and wrap up the whole festival was something that tickled my fancy a good bit more. I’d heard that there had been some problems with the capacity of the indoor venue last year, and I wasn’t going to miss this for the world!
BLOOD FIRE DEATH is a tribute act paying homage to the music of BATHORY. A cover band, basically, you might think. Boasting members from bands such as AURA NOIR, DARVAZA, EMPEROR, ENSLAVED, GORGOROTH, MAYHEM, PRIMORDIAL, SATYRICON, WATAIN, and WHOREDOM RIFE, it just isn’t like any other cover band. It was impossible to think of a better way to bring closure to Hellsinki Metal Festival this year. The show kicked off with the intro of “Oden Ride Over Nordland” coming from tape while the band’s backing choir walked across the stage, all clad in black robes. Oh, yes – the band had a female choir backing them up, and this sure made some of the songs elevate to a league of their own! That intro set nothing short of an epic feel for the show, promising us something spectacular – and the band surely made good on that promise. I’m sorry, VENOM, but you guys didn’t really have a chance against this luminous bunch. BLOOD FIRE DEATH was the true headliner of Saturday – along with CULT OF LUNA, of course. The setlist was bookended by arguably two of the most iconic tracks from BATHORY‘s 1988 album “Blood Fire Death,” from which this tribute had nicked its name. The opener, “A Fine Day to Die,” featured Gaahl from WYRD (and famous from GORGOROTH), so I guess it would have been an understatement to say that the show was set in motion with a haunting gut-punch. Otherwise, the set balanced rather nicely between the eponymous debut from 1984, “The Return of the Darkness and Evil” from 1985, and 1987’s “Under the Sign of the Black Mark.” It was quite mind-boggling to think that the mastermind behind BATHORY‘s music, Thomas “Quorthon” Forsberg, wrote these bangers in the 1980s! They still sounded as invigorating and fresh as ever! Quorthon‘s impact on the budding black-metal aesthetic was huge, to put it mildly. No wonder we saw special guests of the highest caliber during the show – Erik Danielsson from WATAIN; Apollyon of DØDSHEIMGARD, CAVADER, and IMMORTAL fame; Nergal of BEHEMOTH, Grutle Kjellson from ENSLAVED, and Attila from MAYHEM, whose appearance got a few guys behind my back freaking out completely.
So, you see – legend or not, VENOM did not have a ghost of a chance in comparison with this crazy bunch. So, when the title track from that 1988 album classic wrapped up this magnificent tribute, as well as the whole festival, I could sense a massive wave of elation sweeping across the crowd. It’s no secret that black metal wasn’t my cup of tea back in the 1990s, with a very few exceptions, of which BATHORY was one. After all, the music was not that far, in terms of intensity, from the early, shamanic mayhem of the Finnish rock eccentrics, CMX, which I liked a lot at the time. So, this special tribute served as the final, true headliner sort of icing on the cake. What a great way to bring a wonderful weekend of metal music to a close! It was hard not to compare Hellsinki Metal Festival to Tuska, for a number of reasons, but, in the end, it was rather pointless to try to think about these two in terms of which was the better/faster/harder/more tr00 kvlt or whatever. I loved both – and judging by the number of familiar faces that I’d seen at Suvilahti as well as at Nordis, I wasn’t the only one. With the number of metal festivals that have already taken root in Finland, I reckon it must have been quite a gamble to put up one more in the middle of Helsinki 3 years ago, in the city where Tuska had already ruled for more than 20 years. It seems that the gamble paid off – and I’m sure all metalheads are more than happy that it did! In the end, it seems that this city is big enough for two metal festivals, after all. My first experience at HMF was so overjoyed that I can hardly wait to see what special treats the festival is going to offer us next year. So, thank you, Hellsinki Metal Festival, it sure was a blast!
Written by Jani Lehtinen
