First up, The Callous Daoboys, who are quite a bit more extreme and chaotic than the rest of the bands on this bill, but if I’m completely honest, my main reason for wanting to go to this show. Their blend of nu metal, mathcore and off beat samples and melodies is most of the time definitely not an easy listening thing, but oh so impressive when everything comes together right. They started off with some pumping techno song to then immediately stumble into the craziness that is ‘Star Baby’. Every single member seems to throw themselves completely into the show, dancing to music that many wouldn’t deem danceable at all. If you don’t know this band, I can imagine it might get a bit much, but getting to experience a band like The Callous Daoboys is a next level thing. It was a pity that during one of their early songs they somehow lost most of their sound, but kudos to them for keeping it going despite the technical issue, and when the music came back in full force, it seemed to have pushed the crowd over to pure and unabashed excitement. Honestly, this was way too short of a show to truly get to enjoy these guys and galls to the fullest, but from what I’ve heard they really liked playing in Finland and are hoping to come back as soon as they can. One can only hope!

Unprocessed was a whole other beast. More akin in sound to bands like for instance Polyphia, they brought a more easy-going sound that was incredibly intricate. With easy-going, I mostly mean that they were a huge contrast to the band that came before them, with a much softer and more melodic approach. I was totally impressed by the musical talent that we got to witness and enjoy, though for me personally this is more the kind of music I’d like to put on at home to relax on my own instead of watching live in a packed venue. Nothing against the guys, or against the music, just not my cup of tea in this setting. They were still a very pleasing sight while conjuring their music from their instruments. And I have to admit that I enjoyed the occasional blast beats the drummer threw at us.

And then the main event of the night: Tesseract. Last time I got to witness these guys live, was on the massive main stage of Knotfest Finland in broad daylight. And while that was a pretty impressive show, I was curious to see how their music would translate to an indoor stage that was much more intimate. It being a tour to present their latest album ‘War of Being’ to the fans, it came to no surprise they kicked off the set with ‘Natural Disaster’ and ‘Echoes’, and had some more tracks of that album featured on the setlist with ‘War of Being’, ‘Legion’ and ‘The Grey’. It’s honestly impressive to see these guys perform their music live. Vocalist Daniel has a stage presence like no other, controlling the crowd like no other and showing his passion and emotions constantly. And bassist Amos moving around to the music on bare feet and almost as fluent as some feline creature is mesmerizing to behold. Added to that the rather impressive light show, and they easily swept the whole venue off their feet, taking them away to other realms. By the time they got to the end of their regular set with ‘Juno’ many of us were already in an elevated state. But don’t think that they were going to stop there… They still mustered up the impressive double feature ‘Of Mind’, clocking in at almost 15 minutes to leave us exalted and completely satisfied. Simply impressive.