SUOTANA, BRYMIR, and KALMAH. It sounds like a promising combination of bands, and with the 2019 Finland Tour passing through Klubi in Tampere on June 1st, 2019, it seemed like a good idea to check it out. Check out the full gallery here.
I arrived early at the venue so I would have enough time to get a good place. SUOTANA just started playing, and while I had never heard any of their music prior to the show, their powerful sound immediately caught my attention. There’s certainly something fascinating in their melodic death metal. Vocalist Tuomo Marttinen fit in perfectly with the music and gave it some depth. Everything worked together.
While SUOTANA was completely unknown to me, BRYMIR are some of my all-time favorites. It’s always a pleasure to see these guys live. Described as melodeath, melodic extreme metal, and/or symphonic folk metal, these Helsinki guys almost always give their fans a perfect show and this time was no different. Their set was almost exclusively new material, with “For Those Who Died” at the end as their closer. Their set could have been a bit longer and they didn’t get an encore, but you can easily see that these guys enjoy playing live as their energy is truly contagious.
By the time KALMAH was ready to take the stage, Klubi was pretty packed. My memories of this band from the last show I saw (which was a few years ago now) weren’t great, so I was positively surprised that I thoroughly enjoyed myself this time around. The show started with “Swamphell” and “Pikemaster,” moving pretty evenly between their best-known albums. The band’s most recent album, “Palo,” came out as recently as 2018, so they included tracks like “The Evil Kin” and my personal highlight, “Take Me Away.” It seemed as if I wasn’t the only one who was pleased by the show though, as the entire venue came to life during their set. They finished the night up with “Heroes to Us,” “The Black Waltz,” and “Hades.”
The whole evening went by far too quickly and there was not really anything to to complain about regarding the bands themselves. The only thing that would have improved the night would have simply been a bigger and better venue, as the layout and design of Klubi don’t work well when it fills up.
Setlist
1. Swamphell
2. Pikemaster
3. The Evil Kin
4. Holy Symphony of War
5. Moon of My Nights
6. The Blind Leader
7. The Groan of Wind
8. Bird of Ill Omen
9. 12-Guage
10. Seventh Swamphony
11. Take Me Away
12. Heroes to Us
13. The Black Waltz
14. Hades
Photos & text by Anna Brödel
Musicalypse, 2019
OV: 2172
