On every Tuska line-up, there are a handful of artists and bands that are a bit “out there” and don’t necessarily fit the standard mold for a relatively mainstream metal festival. We started out the 2nd day in a kind of relaxed way, with the sweet tunes of A.A. Williams. She brought a gloomy atmosphere to the tent stage with her blend of all kinds of genres going from folk to metal, classical to post-rock, and is a rather acquired taste. But where all there for it, and what a way to softly float into a busy 2nd day at the fest. Both A.A. Williams and her band and the music were absolutely mesmerizing, and before we knew it, we had to rush off to make it in time to the next performance. Time flies when you travel to other dimensions.

If you rather needed a rude awakening after the festivities of the day before, or were looking to continue the partying, the first band on the mainstage today was the right band for you! Finnish disko metal favorites Turmion Kätilöt set up shop there, joined with a bit of rain, which didn’t really put a damper on the party. The guys’ energy was high as usual, the messed around with each other more than once, and brought a nicely diverse setlist spanning most of TK‘s extensive career. Tracks like ‘Sormenjälki‘, ‘U.S.C.H!‘, ‘Grand Ball‘, ‘Dance Panique‘ and more all passed by and got people to dance and sing along. Turmion Kätilöt is one of those Finnish bands you get to see a whole damn lot if you often go to Finnish festivals, but they always slay and are a welcome sight every single time.

One of our favorite new and up-and-coming bands booked at one of our favorite yearly festivals, how can things get any better? Probably not having them play at the exact same time as another one of our favorite bands (Brymir)… But hey, tough choices were made, and Orbit Culture took the upper hand. Last time we saw Orbit Culture in Helsinki, they played a much too short set as the openers for the In Flames Europe tour, so we were really looking forward to getting to enjoy a more extended set from these guys who will be part of the bright future of metal music. And we clearly weren’t the only ones, because the tent filled up to the brim for these Swedish dudes, probably the fullest we’ve seen the tent at this point of the weekend. They were also the first band where we saw the sudden appearance of crowdsurfers, which is a rather rare sight at Tuska. And a setlist that features tracks like ‘Open Eye‘, ‘Strangler‘ and ‘North Star of Nija‘ already straight from the beginning, and favorites like ‘Redfog‘, ‘Vultures of North‘ and ‘Saw‘ to wrap things up after a crushing gig only added fuel to the fire everyone seemed to be feeling. Excellent show!

The glorious return of Clutch to the Tuska festival grounds is something to celebrate for sure! Last time we got them somewhat later in the day on the tent stage, this time quite early on the mainstage. The sun seemed to start peeking around the corner again a little bit, and these stoner rock legends were the perfect thing to go with that! After over 3 decades of existence, they know that they’re doing, and have a whole lot of damn good music to pick from to play live. Add to that a frontman that is an absolute pleasure to behold on stage with Neil Fallon, and you know you’re in for about an hour of great fun and music! This might have been one of the bands that had the biggest appeal to the more aged side of the Tuska crowd, but we were happy to see that a pretty big crowd of all ages had gathered in front of the mainstage to witness these legends. Not sure if part of those youngsters were simply already waiting to have a good spot for the next band, but hey, if it exposes them to something different musically, no complaints here!

Next round of hard choices… placing 2 quite legendary Finnish bands on different stages at the exact same time, is just asking for misery. We opted to keep the party mood going, and went for folk metal legends Finntroll instead of the doom and gloom of Swallow The Sun. And what a party it was! They pulled in one of the bigger crowds we’ve seen in front of the Inferno stage the whole weekend, and blasted us away with an energetic show that almost felt like the Finntroll of the golden days of folk metal! New tracks and classics, a really nice blend of both that was very well received by everyone who came to check them out!

US outfit Motionless In White has been around for a couple of decades and is wildly popular not only in their own country, but all over the world. Surprisingly enough, in those 20 years they never made it to Finland for a show. Knowing that these guys often have pretty impressive energy and stage productions, we were really looking forward what we’d be getting from the very first visit of Motionless In White. To be completely honest, we were a little bit underwhelmed. The energy was definitely there, and they sounded really good. But the stage production was very minimal, we’d be guessing they were on a low budget Europe festival tour to feel out a bit where they could bring their proper production in the future, and we’re hoping that the Finnish crowd convinced them to include Finland on the list whenever they get back to this side of the Atlantic. At least there were quite a bunch of fans singing along to their songs at the top of their lungs… it was enjoyable, but we’ll be waiting for a firm verdict on Motionless In White live until we’ve seen them again under maybe better circumstances.

It’s always a pleasure to see Mr. Marko Hietala on a stage, and we’re so happy that he made a return to a bit more public life and to be the invaluable part of the Finnish music scene he is. We were actually debating if we wanted to go see death metal giants Memoriam instead, who were playing at the exact same time, but considering how the sky looked, we decided to go for the tent stage. Which ended up being a great choice since there seemed to be a cloud bursting during the show. This also brought a lot of people to come to the tent to find shelter from the pouring rain. So Marko probably got a tent that was way more full than he normally would get, and people got a pretty nice soundtrack to wait out the rain. It was really everything you can expect from a Marko Hietala show: great music, wonderfully written songs and amazing vocals by one of Finland’s most recognizable voices!

Luckily, the bad weather seemed to calm down again somewhat, to welcome Swedish melodeath legends In Flames back to the Tuska mainstage! They might have veered away somewhat of their original more harsh sound, but damn those catchy melodies and anthem level lyrics do the trick every single time when seeing these guys live. It was the first time we saw them without Bryce on bass, since he had left about a month ago, but touring bassist Liam Wilson (The Dillinger Escape Plan) is a damn fitting replacement! He brought quite the energy to the stage, and it looked like he had been playing with the guys for years instead of barely a month. The setlist was one to drool over, with a great mix of newer songs from the earlier this year released ‘Foregone’ and classics from almost all eras of the band. I personally still can’t get enough of hearing tracks like ‘Cloud Connected’, or ‘Take This Life’ performed live, an immediate throwback to my youth ensues.

It’s always extremely difficult to squeeze in shows of bands playing on the Tuska KVLT stage, since they overlap a lot with other shows, and for the really popular bands the room gets filled up really fast and a line around the block of people waiting to get in. However, if there was one band we really didn’t want to miss today, it was the Danish youngsters of Nakkeknækker. Heck, some of the band members were essentially not old enough to come to the festival as mere visitors… The only band on the Tuska KVLT stage that wasn’t Finnish, a band that doesn’t have any music published besides a couple of high quality live videos and is being praised as the future for metal… And the future will be damn bright, and heavy as fuck, if it depends on these guys! As soon as they took over the stage, they started to rile up the crowd, and they had barely completed a riff and the whole room was already boiling and moving. Finnish crowds usually aren’t the quickest to start moshpits or get moving, but here there was no sign of that! The whole set there was a moshpit that took over almost half of the room, and people turned absolutely bonkers! This felt like an old school type of underground club show, something big in the making that you were lucky enough to have witnessed. I reckon that the amount of energy, the frantic vibe and killer music can be described as the offspring of Baest and Power Trip, but on steroids… or a whole case of energy drinks! What a show!

Last really tough choice of the day… we absolutely adore the dudes from Haken and were so excited when we saw them on the line-up of this year’s Tuska. However, at the very same time on the other stage, the ladies and gentlemen of Butcher Babies were setting up shop. Another popular US band that finally made it to Finland for their very first show ever here, we just couldn’t miss out on that! And thank god we made that choice, otherwise we’d have missed out on one of the most energetic and fun shows of the whole weekend. The groovy, and at times really catchy, metal from this band is simply infectious, and every single member went all out on stage. Of course, it’s hard to look past the focal point of the band with frontladies Heidi Shepherd and Carla Harvey absolutely killing it on stage and displaying a kind of pleasure of being on stage that only comes from people who are besties and absolutely love that they can do what they do together. They sang, they screamed, they growled,… and got all of us bobbing along to fan favorites like ‘Monsters Ball’ and ‘Beaver Cage’, or the highly entertaining take on Saweetie‘s ‘Best Friend’. I really hope yet again (it feels like I’m falling into repetition quite much here) that bookers in Finland are smart enough to bring them back soon!

We still remember vividly when HIM played as headliners on the 2017 edition of Tuska, it being one of the shows of their short farewell tour after they had announced to be disbanding. There was a lot of emotions going on in the crowds, and fans simply couldn’t believe this might be the very last time they’d see their favorite band live. Over half a decade later, a very similar scenario… Tuska booked illustrious HIM frontman Ville Valo as the headliner for the Saturday, bringing a legend from the Finnish music scene back in the spotlight after he made a proper comeback earlier this year as VV with his solo album ‘Neon Noir‘. That album was received very well and sounded surprisingly much like that good old HIM we all used to love (and still do). Giving Ville the mainstage and incoming darkness to fully show what he can do on his own, was a master move from the festival organization. A pretty large crowd gathered in front of the stage one last time that day, seeing a whole bunch of emotions yet again, and people reminiscing about growing up with the music of HIM. And as if they had ordered it, about halfway the set a large collection of gloomy, dark clouds started gathering behind and above the stage, giving a perfect backdrop for a setlist filled with music from his solo effort and of course a solid grab from the HIM catalogue. Was it exactly the same as it was with the other guys? Not at all. But still a very fun and enjoyable set from a living legend.