When Cancer Bats kicked off the night, the room was still somewhat filling up, but there was actually a quite nice turnout from the start. It’s been a moment since the Canadians showed up in this region, and their mission seemed very much to make up for that with an explosive show from start to finish. Every single band member threw their all into playing, and it was an absolute pleasure to see them ripping it up with their style of hardcore. A style that is perfect warming up for a band like Kvelertak, having a unique, yet somewhat similar blend of metal elements infused into hardcore (punk).

Vocalist Liam paced back and forth, regularly dancing and jumping around when he wasn’t balancing on the edge of the stage passionately screaming in the microphone. And the other guys perfectly matched that energy. A highlight was when their merch girl Brooklyn showed up to do a wonderful duet with Liam on the track ‘Hammering On‘. Their voices and chemistry really vibed and elevated everything to a next level of intensity for the while she was on stage. Though their cover of the Beastie Boys classic ‘Sabotage’ comes in as a close second! Overall, the set contained a nice mixture of older work and of course tracks from their latest album ‘Psychic Jail Break’ leaving us all properly warmed up for what was still to come…

And then it was time for the main event of the night: Kvelertak! Last time I saw them live, they played the much smaller, legendary rock club Tavastia in the center of Helsinki. And to be honest, at first I was a bit worried that there wouldn’t be enough people showing up to fill Kulttuuritalo properly. That worry disappeared quickly when they were about to start and the room started to fill up nicely. It was still nowhere near how a packed Tavastia felt like, but pretty decent on a day in the middle of the week!

They kicked off with ‘Krøterveg Te Helvete’, the opening track on their latest release ‘Endling’, and fittingly so the name of this tour. Once the curtain dropped, Kvelertak‘s signature relentless energy wafted over the room, immediately perking everyone up who wasn’t through the roof excited yet. There simply is almost no match to the way Kvelertak takes over the stage. Every single time I still get surprised even though by now I should know better already. Ivar screams his heart out while constantly on the move, swinging his mic stand and leaning dangerously over the edge of the stage, at regular occasions actually swinging his stand to be over the crowd urging them to shout the lyrics at him, and the other guys also barely stand still for a second. And they all are constantly connecting with the fans in front of them, if they’re not screwing around further back on the stage, either doing these classic heavy metal/hard rock synchronized moves with their guitars or standing up on the risers on either side of the drums.

Besides ‘Krøterveg Te Helvete’ in the very beginning, the setlist of course had plenty of songs from ‘Endling’ like ‘Likvoke’, ‘Døgeniktens Kvad’, ‘Skoggangr’, ‘Morild’ and ‘Endling’ in the encores. And all of those tracks fitted perfectly among all the other tracks, getting great response from the crowd. But it was when they played classics like ‘Blodtørst‘, ‘Kvelertak‘, and of course ‘Mjød‘, the room really exploded. Personally, I missed for instance ‘1985‘ a bit in the set, but hey, no complaints really. This was yet another killer Kvelertak show, as we’ve come to expect from them!