The summer is arriving and with it the summer festivals come along. The festival that kicks this off in Finland is Steelfest Open Air in Hyvinkää, a small city North of Helsinki. They offer a selection of high quality underground and obscure extreme metal bands for a limited amount of people. We had the luck to be welcomed at this highly interesting event to melt away in the sun with our black outfits…

Steelfest takes place at the old wool factory in the middle of the center of Hyvinkää and seems like the perfect setting for this festival. With an outdoor stage and an indoor stage that are about the same size and a schedule that allows you to just flow back and forth between them, allows you to enjoy every single band of the awesome line-up as much as you want. It was really refreshing to be at a festival where I didn’t have to make heartbreaking choices which band to see and which not. There were plenty of food and drink choices at (for a festival in Finland) very reasonable prices and the staff was incredibly helpful and friendly the whole time. Besides that, the fact that this festival has a very specific crowd and sticks to mostly black (and some death) metal, lends very much to the artists mingling with their fans, checking out some colleagues’ shows and enjoying themselves. This overall gave the festival an open family feel despite the rather dark music on the bill. Definitely a “must visit” for any underground and extreme metal fan.