During the pandemic, I discovered the wonderfully eccentric avant-garde metal act IGORRR, which led to us attending their sold-out show at Tavastia in 2022. When they were announced a show at Tampere on their current tour, we decided it was time to go check out Pakkahuone to witness the epic event on April 3rd, 2023. The French band had a couple of interesting support acts with unique sounds: HANGMAN’S CHAIR, DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT, and AMENRA.
Since we were a little unlucky with traffic, we only saw the last song of HANGMAN’S CHAIR, but we were thankfully enough right on time for DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT. The avant-garde black metal experimentalists were nothing short of amazing, focusing on a rather atmospheric show with lots of blast-beats and an incredible light show. We had never seen them before, but were very thankful to be introduced to them in a venue as great as Pakkahuone.
One of the reasons for going to the event was mainly because of Belgian’s most intriguing metal export AMENRA. As a Belgian myself, I have been scolded many times for not having seen this band live yet. I always heard raving things about their shows and never listened to the band prior to seeing them live, because I’ve heard you need to experience their music. I was blown away with the aesthetics, energy, and just the general wall of sound. It’s not very common to have a vocalist singing with their back to the audience, but it somehow produced an incredibly atmospheric show, which ultimately was very impressive and clearly I wasn’t the only one, as the venue was packed! It was also funny to hear a couple of fellow Belgian shout Flemish things from the audience. Altogether, the experience was very immersive and I truly hope these guys get to have their own headlining show/tour within Finland pretty soon – they totally deserve it.
Given the fact that all of the support acts were so different from IGORRR‘s music, it made a very interesting contrast when the audience went from a trance-like experience to full dancing/moshing mode! The band had a recent lineup change, with soprano Marthe Alexandra joining the ranks. It was our first time seeing the band with her as a singer and she was nothing short of impressive. She had really great energy on stage and altogether good chemistry with the other band members. The setlist was a great mix between “Spirituality and Distortion” and “Savage Sinusoid,” with lots of up-tempo songs. With a whopping seventeen tracks, it was on the longer end of the gig spectrum, but one could even say that it could have been longer. We can’t wait for the band to return to Finland and add a few more dates to their tours! Check out our photo gallery here…
Der Weg Einer Freiheit
Amenra
Igorrr
Photos by Laureline Tilkin
