Hellsinki Metal Horizons announced new bands on February 1st, 2022: DECAPITATED, VILDHJARTA, TALBOT, and local heroes …AND OCEANS, KHROMA, KEOMA, and HUMAVOID reinforce the festival lineup.
Hellsinki Metal Horizons, a club festival with eyes to the horizons, scouring the metalverse for acts that you don’t see every summer around every corner!
The main festival event will take place June 10th-11th at Ääniwalli, in the Vallila district of Helsinki, with a warm-up club gig at downtown On The Rocks, on June 9th.
Expect to find more than just bands, as the event is designed as an experience, of which more will be revealed in due time.
Hellsinki Metal Horizons is brought to you as a collaborative effort from Elektrik Products (EP) and Enslain and with the support of TheBlackPlanet zine. Horizons can be seen as a cousin event to EP’s well-established and long-revered Hellsinki Industrial Festival incorporating the same high-quality visuals and venue trimming.
Widen your metal horizons!
Newly confirmed acts:
DECAPITATED
Celebrating their 25th anniversary, and still performing like the bunch of energized kids from Krosno that they started as Poland’s death metal anti-cult are back by popular demand for a proper headlining set!
With their beginnings firmly in the traditional Eurodeath style, but laced with adept musicianship, precision, and whirring technicality, DECAPITATED has since been widening the horizons of what death metal can be: chugging through all the djent draughts, and incorporating thoughtful tempo plays and melodic and modern influences. This band has thoroughly embraced the winds of creation and fought their way to the precipice of extreme music, without ever watering down.
VILDHJARTA
Sweden’s thall-meisters are back in Finland! After releasing their second album “Måsstaden under vatten” these djent/tech legends are more ferocious and contemporary than ever. VILDHJARTA‘s world is a dark and murky one, be prepared to be sucked in!
VILDHJARTA first rose to prominence in the early 2010s after being signed to Century Media and releasing their ground-breaking debut album “Måsstaden,” combining epic-scale story concepts with their distinct musical style, defined by harsh vocals, down-tuned staccato-guitars, and complex rhythms.
KHROMA
Since their inception in 2010, Helsinki-based electro-metal outfit KHROMA have toured Europe 10+ times and released three acclaimed albums, from which their newest outing, 2021’s “Ex Nihilo” has not yet, for obvious reasons, received the live treatment it truly deserves.
KHROMA‘s melting pot of down-tuned grooves, cinematic soundscapes and trip-hop & drum ‘n’ bass beats will truly continue to widen those metal horizons.
KEOMA
How could there be a progressive-minded festival in the city without Helsinki’s own KEOMA? 2018’s Tuska-Torstai champions have been on an upward trajectory ever since, dropping their newest album “Hypothesis” just a few months ago.
With the new album came also a new lady at the helm – a dual wielder of growls and opera-quality cleans, boosting their dynamic to grounds previously unattainable. KEOMA is all about representing the elements of the otherworldly in their progressive tunes, like an astral event of soaring heights and ensuing calms, and with an ever-present groove.
… AND OCEANS
Symphonic, industrial, melodic, mechanical. … AND OCEANS has been stirring all the forbidden elements into their own black metal cauldron already since the ’90s, fearlessly challenging listeners along their path, and after a long slumber, has awoken to regale us once again!
Finnish bands excel in standing out from the crowd, but who more than … AND OCEANS. After a number of experimental evolutions, from power electronics and synth over a dismal black core to the post-modern industrial of their “Havoc Unit” days, their recent comeback release “Cosmic World Mother” is a solid slab of simultaneously ferocious and melodic black metal with nostalgic synths. And with their modern-day line-up of seasoned players, these guys truly deliver on stage!
TALBOT
Next up is the massive soundwalls of Estonia’s psych-doom pioneers TALBOT. What better way to release your festival high than drowning in the heavy atmospheric muck of sludgy, oppressive, yet surprisingly upbeat and exciting post-metal? We’ve invited none other than TALBOT, known for their numerous tours around the Globe, to soothe those late-night cravings and keep the party from ever ending!
HUMAVOID
Artsy multi-instrumentalists with calculatedly erratic and jazz-frantic prog? Surely we could only be speaking of HUMAVOID. Who better epitomizes the progressive-aggressive duality than these locals, fronted by keytar vixen Suvimarja who spits venomous growls, alongside Niko‘s more guttural grunts and eight-string mastery. HUMAVOID attacks from all angles with challenging and mind-warping rhythms and improvisations, but the edgy yet soaring clean vocals tie the lace that beautifies and gives cohesion to the oddly-shaped package. Humavoid are not to be avoided!
Previously Hellsinki Metal Horizons confirmed the appearance of SHINING, ODDLAND, VULTURE INDUSTRIES, and MANTICORA at their festival. The main festival event will take place June 10th-11th at Ääniwalli, in the Vallila district of Helsinki, with a warm-up club gig at downtown On The Rocks, on June 9th. A limited amount of early-bird tickets are now available, you can buy them here.
