Raskasta Joulua in acoustic, so ‘Heavy Christmas’ without Heavy. How exactly does that work? And what are we supposed to expect from that?
Well, it was definitely very different from their usual shows. Everything is on a smaller scale. While a normal Raskasta Joulua gig features many different singers that alternate on stage. This gig only had three singers, Antti Railio, Marko Hietala and Ilja Jalkanen and everyone was present on stage almost the full time of the gig.
Another thing that was much smaller this time around was the crowd, but not because the interest in the gig was any less than normally. In fact, every single ticket got sold and Tampere’s Kaleva Church was filled with more than a thousand people. Yet, the atmosphere of this gig was rather intimate and personal. It felt like we were just hanging out with friends and family, singing Christmas songs together.

Part of why the atmosphere felt so relaxed was all the little banter and jokes between the band members that started even already before the first song, ‘Heinillä härkien kaukalon‘. The gig shortly got really emotional and sad when during ‘Ensimmäinen Joulu‘ the late long-time RJ member Kimmo Blom could be heard from tape. Ilja Jalkanen got hit especially hard by his own emotions during this for his own personal reasons. At some point, he had to shortly leave the stage to collect himself and ‘clean up’.

After this touching moment, the atmosphere got lighter again and Antti was joking around that Marko and Ilja are his favourite ‘Tonttu‘ (elves). And later Mirka Rantanen was introduced as the not quite so little drummer for the song ‘Pieni rumpali‘. This turned out to be probably the most energetic song of the set and the crowd eagerly swayed their hands to its rhythm.

Before the end of the set we got another special treat, in the form of the song ‘Joulu, juhla parahin‘, which they hadn’t played live in many years. After this, the band shortly leaves for the usual encore teasing. We still get to hear ‘Kehtolaulu‘ by the whole band, that Ilja Jalkanen dedicated to Kimmo Blom as well as his own late father. And for the grand finale Marko performed ‘Ave Maria’ in just the small circle of the Raskasta Joulua mastermind Erkka Korhonen, bass player Erkki Silvennoinen and keyboarder Timo Pudas.

While the show missed a bit of the explosive power of the big band shows, it still was a really great evening and I didn’t even mind too much that the show was a lot shorter than their normal heavy gigs.