The annual Sonic Rites festival, focusing on the darkest and heaviest elements of music, is approaching, and as their pre-event, Sonic Rites had combined the German funeral doom band AHAB with the Finnish psychedelic stoner/doom band SUMEA for a nice outing at the Kuudes Linja premises in Helsinki on Saturday, May 4th, 2024. Naturally, we wanted to check out the vibes before the main event, which we are also planning to cover.
The night was opened by SUMEA, who took the stage with good drive. The main figure on stage for SUMEA is the vocalist Tuomas Valtanen, singing with a high, heavy pitch and interacting with the audience. The band clearly had their dedicated followers in the audience, as there were some friendly chats between the vocalist and the audience. The band delivers their music in Finnish and is likely to please those yearning for some retro-sounding metal music with lyrics drawn from the world of fantasy and horror stories.
The main act for the night was AHAB from Germany. The band’s name is taken from the classic Herman Melville novel Moby-Dick. Now, the band’s name is not all that’s taken from the dark maritime themes of the novel. The band’s songs revolve around the themes of shipwrecks and secrets of the deep seas. The music dwells with a dark heaviness accompanied by vocalist Daniel Droste‘s deep growling, but there are also more melodic parts with clean vocals. One can easily think of an allegory to a sea raging with storm then calming again. In addition to Droste‘s vocals, one has to focus on the drumming of Cornelius Althammer. The drummer is quite inventive with his drum beats, which is not always easy as the down-tempo music of AHAB doesn’t really allow the drummer to play a whole lot of beats most of the time. Additionally, the lively work of Althammer is really fun to watch during a show. Check our photo gallery of the evening here…
Sumea
Ahab
Photos by Arto Alho
