Isn’t it great when there are no support bands (especially on a mid-week night)? Not that IMPALED NAZARENE even needs to have supporting acts, as the event has been sold out for a pretty long time, considering this is the first club show of the band in Helsinki after many, many years – ten to be exact. Lots of youngsters in the audience here at On The Rocks on January 23rd, 2026, some of whom had never even seen the band before, and yet there is so much interest around this old band of black’n’roll geezers originating in Oulu, that people literally go wild as soon as they hit the stage.
But before that, we had to wait quite a bit, as there were almost two hours from when the doors opened to the band actually starting the show. Some guys in the first row were getting restless, but they immediately started screaming and headbanging as soon as the first song started. The whole set was almost 30 songs (not that on average these are very long, but still…), making for an impressive crash-course on what the band is all about. Notably, they changed guitarist once again: from Kim (“K. Tormentor”) to Kimmo (stage name “Grim O’Goatshredder”), it’s really a short step, but also makes it easier to keep track, and the “newcomer” held his ground nicely. We have also seen him in action before, at least with SOLACIDE, one of his other active bands. But back to the gig: this band tends to be really consistent in their delivery, in the sense that no matter where they are or what they do, they manage to rile up the fans to unleash hell.
Sure, the age is starting to show, yet their gigs can still be overwhelming, especially in a club setting. Ever the showman, Luttinen still maintains his humor. This held true, of course, tonight as well, entertaining the fans between one song and another, when not otherwise busy screaming his lungs out with his trademark vocals. There was a little for everyone in the night’s set, and multiple encores at the end, preventing people from leaving until the very last moment, marked, of course, by “Total War / Winter War.”
There was something raw and wild in this kind of performance, something that awakened our “inner Finn” as well, so much that as soon as the show ended, we stopped by the nearest “grilli” for an old-school, late-night “hampurilainen.” Always a pleasure to witness the devastation of IMPALED NAZARENE playing live!
