PHOTOSHOOT: Ember Falls & Blind Channel Backstage @ Virgin Oil Co. (Musicalypse Archive)

October 7, 2016

One of Musicalypse’ favorite new acts is Finnish BLIND CHANNEL, who have taken the country by storm with their unique style of “violent pop” music. The band celebrated the release of their debut album, “Revolutions,” on October 1st, 2016, at Helsinki’s Virgin Oil Co., and Musicalypse was there documenting the headliner and their opener, EMBER FALLS, as they

As the band was getting everything ready, EMBER FALLS and RUST N’ RAGE began to slowly trickle into the venue as well to unload their own gear. Once BLIND CHANNEL‘s stage was prepped, it was time to get the instruments ready to go. Starting, as always, with Tommi Lalli on drums, through Olli Matela on bass, Joonas Porko on guitar, Joel Hokka‘s guitars and vocals, and of course, Niko “NC Enroe” Moilanen on vocals as well, they one-by-one tested everything out, and then did a couple play-throughs of “My Revolution” and a few others to try and get the sound in good balance. I’m not sure who their sound tech was, but I will commend him on doing a decent job – Virgin Oil‘s roundish shape makes for weird echoes and the sound quality is often very poor there, but in spite of this, the music was more or less in decent shape by the end of the sound check – nice work!

When they were done, the other opening bands started up their own sound checks and the BC guys ordered their dinner. It was only 19:00 or 20:00 by this point, so now it was just a matter of having some food and killing some time before the show got underway. The doors opened and there was a slow trickle of patrons into the bar, so after dinner, the back headed backstage to start getting prepared for the show.

While mom and dad might worry that the backstage of a concert is a land of drugs and debauchery (hide your daughters, hide your sons!), it seems as though many musicians these days, BLIND CHANNEL and EMBER FALLS among them, are more interested in putting on a good show than getting pissed drunk and fooling around with strangers. Most of what we saw was casual conversation, with a little bit of goofing off – of course, what’s a gig without some fun?

That said, a picture is worth a thousand words, so to truly give you an idea of what went on on the night of the “Revolutions” album release gig, it is best to just let you see for yourselves! Here are our backstage photos from Virgin Oil Co.!