Here we go again! After a great anniversary edition last year, where Tuska Open Air was celebrating its 20th birthday, we’re back at the holy grounds of Suvilahti for another serving of great heavy music. Having looked forward to get to enjoy one of the nicest “family” metal and rock events of Finland, we geared up and went very excited towards great bands, wonderful atmosphere and lovely people… The following is what took place…

I only managed to catch a small part of Stick To Your Guns, but what I heard (including the touching speech about how wrong it is that they’re separating kids from their parents and lock them in cages in the States) makes me looking forward to the time that I can catch a full set of these guys! A great piece of melodic hardcore you can sign me up for any time.

Blind Channel (***1/2), always sure to get certain ingredients: screaming girls, catchy pop-infused metal (or “Violent Pop” as they call it) and a bunch of hyperactive guys all in white jumping around the stage as if they’d put some Duracell batteries up their ass. And that’s exactly what we got during their performance on the small Inferno stage. They’re latest release Blood Brothers solidified their status as promising new kids on the block and in the mean time they seem so confident in their work that they don’t even play the cover songs they got so well-known for. All in all yet another high octane gig that left a lot of out-of-breath girls in its wake.

After the day before showing Tuska that Emperor is still relevant in the present black metal world, frontman Ihsahn (*****) came to welcome us in the dark corners of his impressive musical brains. The man has made some damn good avant-garde and progressive musical constructions in which he blends black and death metal influences with electronic beats and rhythmically strange patterns. Every single release by Ihsahn has at least a couple of surprises while still maintaining a signature sound. On record this is some of my favorite music and he manages to duplicate the sound and feeling of it perfectly in a live setting as well!

On the main stage, a completely different setting started: the Swedish rock band Europe (***) came to rock our worlds and were clearly ready and excited to kick ass. Usually I love a classic hard rock show any time, but somehow this didn’t really do it for me today. Their songs are pretty decent and vocalist Joey Tempest is clearly a born entertainer, swirling his mic stand around, coming closer to his fans and simply owning the stage. But the songs are too polished and “happy” sounding for me to keep me around for the whole set. By the time set closer The Final Countdown blasted through the speakers, I was already nipping from my refreshing whisky cocktail.

The very last band on the indoors Inferno Stage brought a very different spectrum of the rock world to us, one that I appreciate a lot more. Helsinki-based Grave Pleasures (*****) is a dark band to its core with some damn quality post-punk/deathrock. I’ve always had a soft spot for these kind of bands and if they’re any bit good, I immensely enjoy their gig. Vocalist Mat fronted the band with a ferocious and almost psychotic passion and the skulls, bones and gas masks littered all over the stage brought a setting perfect for this kind of music. A band of which I had the catchy tunes of Infatuation Overkill and Joy Through Death stuck in my head for quite a part of the day!

With the American rock band Clutch (*****) the organisation got another top act on the stage. The band has been around for over a quarter of a century and was a perfect pick to close the Helsinki stage for this edition with their funky and groovy blend of hard rock, hardcore punk and metal. Especially frontman Neil Fallon pulled a lot of the attention to him with his big grins, livid facial expressions and weird gestures. That the band has been around for quite awhile already in the exact same setting translated into a damn solid performance that noticeably got quite a few people dancing!

That the Australian band Parkway Drive (*****) has grown into quite the performance machine in their 15 years of existence has become pretty clear. The metalcore outfit has been headlining at many European festivals this Summer and have a show to match their status. The guys were bathing in smoke right from the start and behind them there was an impressive set-up of rotating lights mounted on scissor lifts, making for quite the light spectacle behind them. Which sadly probably was a bit lost on all of us, giving the very sunny time of the day in Helsinki.

But what definitely didn’t get lost on us, was the fact that these guys play damn solid live which translated into the biggest moshpits I’ve seen the whole weekend. On top of that the Aussies seem to want to make sure they reach a certain temperature everywhere they go, because the amount of pyro they put to work made you feel the heat even from pretty far away. And when they made the drummer go upside down while his rolling cage was lit on fire during Crushed in combination with even more fire and fireworks, the completely blew the lid off the evening! A band that hasn’t reached its limit yet and probably will go on to be one of the biggest bands of its generation. It was a pleasure to get to welcome them at Tuska!

For more pics, go to our photo coverage here.