Blowup festival vol.4, the 2018 edition of the festival, organised by Blow Up That Gramophone. What a line-up! With these names we could only decide to attend this event and enjoy several of the biggest doom and sludge bands on these days, among other less-expected choices in the scene. We have been blown away for 3 days in Helsinki’s Korjaamo venue.

Festival opener was the Finnish Dark Buddha Rising (***) that brought immediately a tough nut to swallow with their psychedelic drone/sludge/doom metal. They recently released the “Black Trilogy” compilation to make the albums – Ritual IX (2008), Entheomorphosis (2009) and Abyssolute Transfinite (2011) more easily available to the public and celebrate their 10 years of occult music. And that music was live heavy and all-obliterating with definitely a heavy sauce of psychedelics. Vocalist M. Neuman stood in the center of attention with often frantic moves, crazed shrieks and screams and a behavior that made you think he was actually on acid the whole time. An at times trance-inducing performance which was perfect to kick off a great weekend of impressive music.

All the way from San Francisco was second band Acid King. (***). This stoner band has already been around for 25 years and are simply an institute in the genre! Although they changed bass-players quite a lot, the guitarist and singer Lori Steinberg has been a permanent member of the band. The guys had some luck with the audience as there were already quite a lot of people present so early on the evening. The previous band made the audience ready and warm for the festival atmosphere so the guys of Acid King could take benefit from that. The music was nice and fitted very well to bring some more joy to the evening somehow. In the front rows people were totally going for it despite the early hour.

A somewhat stranger choice in the program, King Dude (****) played third on Friday. The first song singer-songwriter Thomas Jefferson Cowgill played was directly spot on. Basically the whole act was one man having the guts to be there alone with his guitar on stage, singing emotional songs about Lucifer and other devilish scenes. I think I speak for everyone, as somehow all people in that concert hall could relate in whatever way to the antichrist-themed lyrics. Maybe the low notes Thomas sang were not always pitch perfect, but that definitely didn’t kill the mood and vibe of the songs. One very big plus of this performance was the interaction the singer had with the audience. There were jokes made about drugs, inner head-voices and forgotten song texts. At some point Cowgill forgot about his setlist and had the audience choose the songs, this could also be because he made a last-minute decision to change his set into a one man show despite the other instruments set up behind him. King Dude brings good music and simply is a natural born entertainer! We maybe would’ve liked to see a couple of this more rock and post-punk oriented tracks from his latest album (for the review go here), but on the other hand what he played was so good that we wouldn’t want to complain too much.

Sludge metal legends Crowbar  (****) played the evening’s fourth entry. This American band was first called Aftershock, but after some band-member-changes Kirk Windstein (also known from the band Down) decided on the name Crowbar. This band has been dubbed as one of the founders of the sludge metal genre with their combination of stoner, doom and the harder punk side. The guys knew very well how to make the atmosphere rise to new heights in the old factory hall of the Korjaamo venue. There were several moshpits on the more harder and classic songs like for instance To Build A Mountain. So far in the evening Crowbar has been the most ‘moving’ band, that is to say spirit-wise. Definitely a step up from the show we saw of them in the beginning of Summer at Tuska Open Air!

The Russian atmospheric doom metal band Kauan (****) was something completely different from every band we had seen so far this evening. The music was very atmospheric and brought some calmness to the evening after all the wild and heavy stoner moshpits. Fun fact about this band is that they are all Russian members, but the name of the band is Finnish and also the lyrics are in the Finnish language. The meaning of the band’s name is ‘for a long time’, and that is also how their music feels. Allowing yourself to let the music enter your mind will bring you wherever in time you wish. For one moment we got dragged out of the cold October evening and brought to warm and fulfilling places in our mind to the tones of violin, keyboards and intricately constructed guitar melodies.

Closer of the main stage of this first festival day was yet another American band: Bongripper (***1/2). This Chicago doom band was a perfect outfit to finish up with their heavy as fuck instrumental doom. Rarely I’ve seen a band that plays this music genre be so actively engaged into their music. They threw their all into the songs with bodies moving almost as hard as the music was vibrating through all of us. The soundwaves hit you so hard that you almost literally felt as if you were being blown off your feet to take you to a whole other world. This set was tantalizing, mind-blowing and left you easily with your mouth open in confusion of what just came over you.

The very last band of the first evening was the Norwegian Okkultokrati (***1/2) and is a special one again. The outfit brings an eclectic mix of black metal, sludge and hardcore punk which translated in a quite exciting and energetic show. The black metal bleakness, sludge heaviness and feverish hardcore were all clearly represented and for instance the passion from vocalist Black Qvisling and nervous bouncing around from bassist Kjetil Nernes brought the energy through the roof one last time before everyone headed home. Their music at times reminded me of older work from their countrymates Kvelertak which was definitely not a bad thing in my book! A band to check out if you don’t know them yet.