While he had already given his official goodbye show earlier, the infamous Finnish DJ Proteus had one more last hurrah tonight, not wanting to break his promise to his friends of Turmion Kätilöt. So those who missed out, were in for a treat! He was known as one of the best, if not the best, hard dance and hardcore DJ’s coming from the Nordics and his energetic performances will be greatly missed. Fittingly with the night, he mixed his hard beats with some touches of metal and got quite some people dancing already from quite early on in the night. As usual when Proteus takes over a stage, he’s jumping, dancing and running around like a madman in between setting up his mixes, which is simply infectious. For a couple of tracks, his friend from ErilaZ came to provide some additional guitar, ramping up the metal touch even more. Dance circles came together, and the atmosphere just felt right. While at first people seemed to look a bit weirded out about his beats, most of the crowd warmed up pretty quickly. Near the end, you could see that despite this not really being a show played in front of his usual crowd, Proteus was somewhat emotional about this very very last show. Stepping out appropriately, Proteus launched some more extreme noise-sounding hardstyle track followed with a “Hardcore never dies!” We’re truly delighted we were able to experience this!

Lord Of The Lost was another band we were really looking forward to. Last time they were in Helsinki for a live show was ages ago, and with the release of ‘Judas‘ a couple of years ago they have been soaring to new heights of popularity ever since. At the end of 2022, they surprisingly dropped a brand-new album with ‘Blood & Glitter’, basically out of nowhere and things seems to be going well for these guys. For this set as special guests of Turmion Kätilöt, they didn’t play any song of that album, but treated us instead with a nice grab from the rest of their discography. Contrary to some of their more recent work, we got a more dominantly heavy set that was clearly enjoyed by everyone there. Tracks like ‘Dry the Rain‘ and ‘Full Metal Whore‘ really rocked the place and fan favorites like for instance ‘Loreley‘ were sang along to at full force. Wrapping up with the weirdly familiar sounding Latin infused ‘La Bomba‘ was simply the perfect move to set up Turmion Kätilöt for one hell of a party. Chris Harms continuously told us that they were so happy to be back in Helsinki, and we couldn’t agree more, hope to see you really soon again!

When Turmion Kätilöt‘s stage was revealed, we knew we were in for quite the spectacle with a stage setup and production where they didn’t have to obey anyone’s rules but their own. The band came on stage, greeted with a roar coming from the thousands of fans gathering in front of them, and off they went. Since this show initially was to kick off their ‘Global Warning’ campaign, it made only sense that they started the set with ‘Naitu‘ and ‘Kyntövuohi‘, and later included also ‘Sano kun riittää‘ and ‘Viha ja rakkaus‘. But since only the day before they had released their 10th full-length ‘Omen X’, there were plenty of tracks from that one as well with ‘Sormenjälki‘, ‘Totuus‘, ‘Isä meidän‘ (with MC Raaka Pee‘s daughter joining to do some of the vocals), ‘Gabriel‘, ‘Kuolettavia vammoja’ and ‘Vie se pois‘.

But that was not all! Since this night was meant as a celebration of everything that is and was Turmion Kätilöt, we got tracks from every single album they’ve released with both fan favorites and songs that they haven’t played live in a long long time. From start to finish, the whole room was ready to party with them, and the dancing, fists in the air and jumping around didn’t seem to stop for a moment. And besides a really awesome and diverse setlist, some proper fireworks and pyro, Turmion Kätilöt had a couple more surprises in store for us. For ‘Dance Panique‘, the Freakshow Hookers, a suspension act they’ve worked with several times in the past, showed up shoving some nails through themselves and Commander Panda from the music video made an appearance as well. The Freakshow Hookers came back a couple of times, where for instance during ‘Pirun nyrkki‘, the lady of the duo got properly suspended, swinging around from the rafters with some hooks through her back and legs. And besides MC Raaka Pee‘s daughter showing up to do some guest vocals during a couple of tracks, they also cranked out the old classic ‘Irstauden ilosanoma‘ for which Jessi Frey of Velcra fame joined them on stage.

With a full setlist of about 26 tracks, this was an impressive and varied show that probably could have gone on for a while still. But I guess the well over 2 hours we got was plenty… Turmion Kätilöt properly kicked off their anniversary year with a show to remember. A show that is one for the band’s history books and that we wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on. Now they’re soon going to go and conquer Europe on their very own headline tour before they get into another club tour in Finland. I foresee epic parties in the future!