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.

For those who weren’t satisfied yet by the 2 previous long nights of doom, sludge, stoner and industrial music, the organisation had a little Sunday night afterparty show planned. This time only the smaller “Kulmasali” stage opened its doors for the last two bands and their fans. Two final bands before starting with detox and real life the next day.

Opener of the evening was the Finnish sludge/stoner outfit Demonic Death Judge (****). They got a bit unlucky in the beginning because of the low amount of people that showed up. Despite this they threw themselves immediately in their show and made sure the atmosphere was ready and very welcoming for the late birds that entered the venue. The war oriented projections and nature sceneries in the background added another dimension to the show, making one think about life while others were dancing and just enjoying the good vibes. We spotted a heavily enthusiastic Vincent Houde  from Dopethrone banging his dreads around and getting warmed up for his upcoming show.

And that warm-up might have been a good call, because the last band of this year’s Blowup was quite the kick in the teeth. The Canadian sludge/stoner band Dopethrone (****) sounded heavy, nasty and absolutely killer. A lot heavier than the previous band but definitely not less attractive. Their own description of their music, “slutch metal” or in other words “a foul Canadian mix of yellow snow, crackhead diarrhea, blood, tears and broken dreams”, is pretty accurate and shows that these guys don’t take themselves too seriously. They like their booze, they like their drugs and they love cracking jokes and playing heavy music. The recently returned Julie Unfortunate joined these dirty fuckers on stage about halfway the show and belted out some screams and growls that would make many piss their pants in fear. The people in the audience were going crazy with at some point a crowdsurfer accepting the challenge. Everyone there were having fun and went into a booze (and drugs?) fueled craze for one last time this weekend!

Looking back on this festival we can say it was a blast seeing so many people showing up and seeing everyone going crazy on their favourite bands. The ethos and atmosphere was good overall, the food, beverages and other facilities were nice with short lines, and the schedule was not too crazy since there was only maximum a half hour overlap. We also benefited from the small size of the festival. We didn’t have to miss too much playtime if you wanted to see two bands play at the same time. Moreover thanks to it size bands tend to show up mixing in with the crowd or hanging out for a little chat with the fans. A small detail that seemed very band-friendly, is that all were deemed equal, playing an exact same show length of one hour. One last thing that you don’t see at every festival, was the opportunity for bands to make use of projected images or videos as their background instead of a simple backdrop which often added an extra dimension to the performances. As we said before: keep up the good work and we’re already looking forward to next year’s edition!