For a Finnish festival, Hellsinki Metal seems to offer a rather rarely seen collection of bands, with a majority consisting of bands from outside the country. Some of those bands have never been to Finland, or haven’t been there a lot, or are even touring with a special show that makes their appearance even more exciting. Seeing bands like Triumph Of Death performing Hellhammer, Deicide, Gutalax, Blackbraid, Abbath performs Immortal, and Trelldom, just to name a few, makes this line-up already really unique. And then add to that some more acts that are really highly demanded and some stellar power and heavy metal sprinkled throughout, and you can’t deny that this line-up is one of the most special ones of all Finnish festivals.

Compared to most Finnish festivals, the amount of Finnish bands is way less than the usual 50/50. But those they do select to play Hellsinki Metal, are mostly those bands that other festivals rarely pick for their line-ups. Which again makes the Hellsinki Metal line-up more interesting than most others. On Friday, you get a strong kick-off of the festival with first true Finnish death metal when Deathchain takes the Helsinki 02 stage with their putrid sound, which is going to be the perfect starter for the whole weekend. This local death metal act formed in 2001 is better than ever live nowadays and is a must-see for any fans of extreme metal. Though for those who like a good serving of melody mixed into their extreme metal, at the same time Suotana takes over the Hellsinki 03 stage, who with their latest album reached an epic scale reminiscent of for instance old school Wintersun. And that’s not all for the Friday, because the Hellsinki 01 stage will get its baptism through Wolfheart ripping it up early in the day, and those who want to keep it going after the main headliner, can dive into the inside stage still at midnight for Swallow The Sun putting on the doom and gloom.

On the Saturday, we get on the Hellsinki 02 stage both Crownshift, the Finnish supergroup featuring members of myGRAIN, Finntroll, Wintersun, Nightwish, and Children of Bodom who has only played a couple of live shows, and Finnish melodeath institution Insomnium. While on the inside stage Hellsinki 03, you can witness the greatness of the popular black metal group Havukruunu, the heavy metal unit Tyrantti, who has been on a meteoric rise on the Finnish metal scene since their formation in 2016. Known for their high energy performance with extremely catchy vocals and excellent riffs, truly a band that you need to experience live! Oh, and we of course can’t forget about the Finnish black metal cult legends of Barathrum that is pretty impressive every single time we’ve seen them live.

As mentioned earlier, Hellsinki Metal Festival once again brings unique bands to Finland. Of which many have been bucket list bands to see to countless metalheads, one of them being Triumph Of Death playing legendary tracks from the almighty Hellhammer. With the original vocalist, the one and only Tom Warrior, this is the closest you can get to experiencing the cult status band Hellhammer. Being that Hellhammer was active for basically just a few demos, they never played live. This is the only way of experiencing this true forerunner of extreme metal.

Maybe one of the most highly anticipated acts of the whole festival are the death metal giants Deicide. This band has supposed to play in Finland multiple times in the past years but never working out, so finally it seems like we are going to witness the blasphemous prowl of this 1989 established death metal unit. I suggest every single goes to check ’em out, since you never know when you’re going to witness them again.

And to the list of much desired acts to come to Finland, you can easily add Avantasia. The last time they played in Finland was over half a decade ago, and an appearance of Tobias Sammet with his beloved Avantasia is a rare sighting anywhere. It’ll be interesting to see how the setlist will look like and who he’ll be bringing with him to do some of the guest vocals, but one thing is sure: this will be an absolutely epic showcasing of excellent music to wrap up the first day!

On the Saturday, one of the highlights for many will most definitely be Abbath. While Abbath has played with his solo band a few times in Finland, always busting out those old Immortal tunes, this showing will be something special. This gig consists of only Immortal songs, which is great news for any fans who never got to experience Immortal live with Abbath. This will be the closest you’ll get to an Immortal with Abbath! Behind the drums is also long-standing Finnish drummer Ukri Suvilehto which is going to always rile the Finnish crowd up seeing a Finn blasting legendary black metal tunes.

But that’s not all. Looking at the line-up for the Saturday, we can easily see tons of people showing up for the atmospheric black metal outfit Blackbraid, who has known a rather meteoric rise with their 2 albums of Native American inspired music. Or to see heavy metal queen Doro take over the stage while they still can see her. The outside stages continue to have highly popular bands for the rest of the day, with extremists Meshuggah, power metal legends Hammerfall and German thrash metal icons Kreator. And that’s barely half of the line-up, we really have to commend the organization for having their fingers on the pulse of the metal scene so well, clearly knowing what the fans want to see…

Besides the festival’s rather unique approach with the line-up, where they decided to go for a way higher rate of non-Finnish bands compared to the majority of Finnish festivals, it seems straight from the beginning, they put a lot of their chips into creating an excellent festival experience for their visitors. There is the “R.I.P.” tickets, their own take on the standard VIP tickets, last year there was a bungee jump stand and even a bouncy castle to be found in the festival area. They also have a pretty extensive “Brutal Bazar” with plenty of vendors of which some are really unique and not often seen at these kinds of festivals, which they should have expanded for this year’s edition to cover even more ground and variety.

And on top of all of that, it seems they’re really looking to improve time after time, having added a whole new area this year in collaboration with Bodom Bar and the remaining Children of Bodom guys. They offer the opportunity to spend some of your time in the sauna and watching a show on the outside stage from a hot tub with a cold drink in your hands, which sounds like a pretty awesome experience to have with a small group of friends! But they also added the “Bodom Badlands”, which will be an exhibition featuring a small piece of the collection of memorabilia that the Children of Bodom guys have gathered throughout the existence of the band. A special thing for them, since their very last show was played in the Helsinki Ice Halls, part of the festival area. The exhibition almost reminds us a little bit of the travelling Slipknot museum you always can find anywhere Knotfest strikes down, a pretty cool feature!

The festival area is located pretty conveniently, looking from Helsinki’s center. Coming from there, it’s super easy to get to the area with public transport or even bicycle or e-scooter. And for people who come from a bit further away, the closes train station Pasila, is merely a 15 min walk away, or again easy to travel from with public transport, bicycle or e-scooter. It gets close to the convenience that Tuska offers every year to get to the festival. The only thing we highly recommend to not do, is try to come to Hellsinki Metal by car, because there is simply no (cheap) parking available.

But besides easy to get to, we find the area where the festival takes place, a very nice space. We haven’t seen many festivals that have these 2 nice and big outside stages, but also have a solid building where they have an inside stage. And while the festival is of a good size, somehow it never feels too big, with everything within reach with only a minute or two walking. We absolutely love this setup!