What a way to start Tuska 2024! The Germans of Lord of the Lost have been getting more and more popular over the course of their long careers, due to consistently pumping out captivating music, doing things their own way and simply being decent human beings. They always bring an amazing show, whether they perform at Eurovision, support for Iron Maiden or are doing their own headline show, and we expect no less of the openings band for this year’s edition! Get ready for both dancing and banging your heads!

One of the very few black metal bands of the weekend, and one with quite a bit of pedigree within its ranks, it being one of the (many) projects of Finnish guitarist Markus Vanhala. Expect nothing less than old school black metal excellence in what basically is a great tribute to the classic black metal of the Norwegian kind, like for instance Emperor, of who Markus is a big fan. Go get your corpsepaint on and let’s go trve kvlt!

This band from Moldova has been around for quite a moment now, and is really catching its stride right now. With the illustrious vocalist Lena Scissorhands showcasing her enormous vocal talent and nack for whipping her colorful dreads around like there’s no tomorrow, guitarist Vidick throwing his frantic energy in the mix, and latest addition Alice Lane supporting drummer Eugen in keeping the rhythm and flow. One moment you get relentless metalcore, the other bouncy nu metal, but one for one their songs are bombshells and will kill on the tent stage!

If you’re looking for something maybe a bit more intimate and even somewhat old school we can highly recommend you go check out Krypta on the TUSKA KVLT stage. Some good old classic Finnish rock will be served there. Cool chill vibes, good riffs and tasty music throughout with a touch of exotic for those who are not Finnish, since all lyrics are in Finnish. It’s a highly catchy style of occult rock that could bring a good bit of relief amongst all the violence that is booked for the rest of the day.

For all the Finnish visitors, Suburban Tribe is an absolute classic, and for most probably a band they grew up with or at least survived their teenage years with. They haven’t been active in over a decade, but announced a couple of months ago out of the blue that they’re back and will be playing live again! They already delivered a banger of a sold out Tuska warm-up show at On The Rocks in Helsinki recently, and we saw it was good… We heard several people talking about the band being in the best form they’ve ever known them to be in…

Deathcore has been on the rise the past couple of years with the likes of Lorna Shore and Slaughter To Prevail getting massive crowds to attend shows of an extreme music genre we never would have guessed could appeal to so many. The Finnish answer to this boom, could very well be Assemble The Chariots. The epic scale in which they operate and their unique brand of cinematic, at times almost proggy deathcore is quite the onslaught live! TUSKA KVLT is the place to be, don’t miss out!

Ever since their ‘The Devil Is Fine’ debut album over half a decade ago, we’ve been huge fans and supporters of Zeal & Ardor. They’ve evolved quite a bit over the years, from a one-man project mixing black metal with blues and similar sounds of the slaves, to a full-fledged band that surprises every time again, experimenting with new influences and sounds brought to the mixing table. This will be an absolutely amazing show, and if you miss out on it, you might regret it!

For many visitors, this was not a welcome addition at all, especially not on the headlining position they are. We still hear the outcries “is Tuska still a metal festival?” or “is Tuska selling out to get more money?”. We believe the organization had to be somewhat creative this year with the headliners because of low availability of big names (possibly because of that small festival called Hellfest that is happening in France at the same time), but we applaud the guts it took to book a band like Pendulum as the closing act for the Friday, being it that they’re mostly known as a drum ‘n’ bass band. But hey, that kind of music speaks to quite a chunk of metalfans, and the band themselves have always been big lovers of metal as well, even having worked with big metal acts like In Flames or recently Bullet For My Valentine for some of their songs. This is going to be quite the party, and we can’t wait to see how amazing of a show it’ll be. We bet they’re going to close the first day of the festival in style and with a huge bang!