And while Tuska Sunday usually is a more relaxed day to sort of fade out the weekend of festivities in style, this year’s Sunday was probably almost the most intense one of the weekend! Starting off with the weirdness that Imperial Triumphant brought, was quite excellent! Their style of highly experimental and eclectic black metal is a sight to behold, and the masked entities that took over the stage were simply enigmatic! We had seen them not too long ago in a smaller club setting in center Helsinki, but clearly they can handle any size stage with their epic shows! They even did their champagne spray and share moment during one of their songs as I had witnessed before at said club show… I was kind of hoping for that, but did not expect it to happen at an event and stage this size! Imperial Triumphant is definitely not easy listening music, but damn, what a band!

The first band on the mainstage was one that a whole lot of people were looking forward to, as was proven in how quickly their merch sold out and how big the crowd was gathering in front of the stage despite the rain. If you had told us in the past that a crowd this large would show up for a deathcore band in Europe, we probably would have had a laugh. But Lorna Shore managed to go beyond the limits of their rather extreme style of music and speak to a bunch of people that otherwise wouldn’t come near deathcore if their lives depended on it. And what a bombshell of a performance it was! While of course tracks like ‘To the Hellfire’ and ‘Of the Abyss’ were welcomed with open arms and were absolutely killer, especially the ‘Pain Remains’ triplet songs really hit home hard. Hearing deathcore as diverse as is portrayed in those songs, featuring a topic as heavy as mental health and suicide, while the world around us matched the vibe with gray tones and slight rain, was an experience that many of us won’t forget any time soon!

When we saw that they had scheduled Electric Callboy on the tent stage on Sunday, we already foresaw there not being nearly enough space to fit everyone in who wanted to witness the party that would follow these guys. I kind of felt bad for the band that had to play at the same time, I can imagine that there was a rather low turnout for them, looking how the tent was filled even tighter than sardines in a tin can… Sadly, the EC boys had to play again in Finland not being complete since one of the guys had to bail out for personal reasons, but as we know of these guys, they don’t let that hold them back. As when we saw them before at one of their sold out Helsinki shows, they kicked off hard with the trio ‘Tekkno Train‘, ‘MC Thunder II (Dancing Like a Ninja)‘ and ‘Spaceman‘, and the party had begun! This was the second time this weekend we saw crowdsurfers appear from the very beginning of the show, and we saw it was good. When ‘Everytime We Touch‘, their take on the Cascada hit, was started, we thought the energy couldn’t go more through the roof, but that was of course counting out viral hits ‘Hypa Hypa’, ‘Pump It‘ or ‘We Got the Moves‘ from the equation. A great show that left us with one thought afterwards: “these guys need to be on a bigger stage”!

Back to the mainstage to welcome the Mongolian rock/metal sensation The Hu to Finland! While earlier with Lorna Shore we didn’t notice this as much, but the extra bit of stage that was build for Ghost‘s later performance, was really hindering the experience here somewhat. The Hu usually just stands on one line playing their music, and doesn’t really move around all that much besides what they do behind their mic stands. But with the extra bit of stage built in front, we really felt a bit disconnected from the performers. Luckily the music was impressive enough to allow us to just close our eyes, forget about that and let ourselves drift away to the mesmerizing music coming from their traditional instruments and throat singing. If you get the change to behold The Hu live any time soon, we highly recommend you to not skip on it!

As if they hadn’t made it tough enough earlier throughout the weekend having to choose between what was playing on the tent stage and Inferno stage every single time, someone decided to increase the difficulty by putting Finnish black metal legends …and Oceans, Dutch symphonic metal favorites Delain and UK metallers Urne at the exact same time… While we were very tempted to go see the other bands, we decided to go for Urne as our last musical tasting before the very last headliner of the weekend. We haven’t regretted it one bit, and we dare to say that everyone who was there with us, feels the same about this. Their style of music is a very unique and interesting blend of metalcore, sludge metal and a touch of groove metal, with a vocalist who screams his lungs out from start to finish, a guitarist who was getting lost in his music throughout and a drummer who had the time of his life. And the music, damn that level of intensity hit hard this late in a very tiring weekend! They were about to release a brand-new album that was produced by Gojira‘s frontman, and you could hear the touch he had on the music, absolutely crushing! If you missed out on this, you really missed out on something, go forth and listen to their music, you might discover your new favorite band!

And then there was Ghost… Tuska was one of the first festivals who saw the potential and put them as one of the headliners all the way back in 2016, which resulted in a sold out day back then. And now they finally returned, even bigger and more epic than before! They graced us with a visit while being on their ‘Re-Imperatour‘ and as always, Papa Emeritus was controlling the crowd as if he had put a spell on all of us. Him and his Nameless Ghouls cranked out hit after hit with early highlights ‘Rats‘ and ‘Cirice‘, but kept coming hard with ‘Year Zero‘, ‘Mary on a Cross‘, ‘Dance Macabre‘ and of course the absolute fan favorite ‘Square Hammer‘! A Ghost show is an experience, and we couldn’t have wanted for anything more to wrap up this excellent weekend of music and fun! Looking forward how Tuska is going to top this with next year’s edition…