Photo Reports

De Casino in Sint-Niklaas organizes Great Gigs in the Park, three weeks with all kinds of music in an idyllic park setting. For all those who were missing out on the first day of Graspop Metal Meeting this Thursday was dedicated to the raw sound of guitars and alternative music.

If there is a need for more energy, the singer of Penus can help you out. Five seconds in, and he is already dancing on the fences of the kiosk. Penus makes great space rock/psych punk, sucking you in and making time fly by.

Something absolutely different is the poetry reading of Johan Sebastiaan Stuer. No music, just humor, insights, and beauty.

With the setting sun, the boys of The Hickey Underworld prove they are back after a break of eight years. They certainly haven’t lost their vibe of quirky alternative rock and are ready to become a great band once again.

Last year, a brand new metal festival popped up in Helsinki that was trying to do something new by offering an interesting mix of extreme and progressive, named Hellsinki Metal Horizons (reports here and here, photo galleries here and here). This year, the organization behind the festival scaled down somewhat and made a slight name change (probably to not be confused with another new Helsinki metal festival), but definitely didn’t scale back on the extreme part. Offering some of the weirdest, heaviest and most extreme bands of their genres, this was a metal club festival that we didn’t want to miss out on!

The first day had a very death metal heavy line-up with Eradication of the Unworthy Infants, Devenial Verdict, Corpsessed, Marianas Rest and headliners Baest!

Grave Pleasures is a band that takes up a rather unique space within the Finnish scene. With a very post-punk and Goth rock sound, they appeal to a wide range of music lovers while not really fitting the mold of any specific subgenre completely. About a week after the release of their new album ‘Plagueboys’, they played 2 release shows, and we made sure to be at the Helsinki one since there don’t seem to be any set plans to play more shows than this in 2023. Much to our surprise, we first got a destructive set by Tampere natives Dome Runner to get us loosened up somewhat…

Due to the pandemic, it’s been years since the Australian proggers of Ne Obliviscaris have been able to play gigs, let alone tour Europe. So after having just released a pretty epic new album with ‘Exul’, them finally coming to the European territories is reason enough to make sure we don’t miss out. So off we went to catch them at the very first show of the tour at Tavastia in Helsinki. And with them, they brought the Andorran prog death outfit Persefone and Italian instrumental proggers Asymmetric Universe, ensuring a night of world expanding and mind-bending music…

THE CULT is one of the real iconic rock groups that released a number of albums in the 1980s and 1990s that have to be part of every rock album collection. ‘Love’, ‘Electric’, ‘Sonic Temple’ just to name a few. They became famous even outside the rock scene as well when their song ‘Sanctuary’ was used as soundtrack for a commercial of a worldwide-known swimwear brand.

After an almost 7-year-long break, the release of their latest album ‘Under A Midnight Sun’ in 2022 it was now the opportunity to play some of the new songs live on stage. But beforehand, LILI REFRAIN entered the stage and opened up the evening with a musical performance session. The Italian one-woman performance plays and creates sound samples live on-stage, records them and the builds it all up to a song all at the same time. It was a very interesting experience and her unique voice added an ethnic, shamanic touch to it. Nothing you would expect as warm-up for a massive, solid rock’n roll gig but still awesome.

With a little delay, finally THE CULT opened their set with ‘Rise’ and led the audience through the full bandwidth of their more than 40 year long career. The voice of Ian Astbury is still unbelievable, has not lost any power. He still dances and grooves charismatically over the whole stage, and his power rises with any minute of the show. Billy Duffy was and still is one of the guitarists with an absolutely unique sound, you’ll only need a few seconds to identify THE CULT when you hear him play the guitar. This night he delivered a fantastic set. Crystal clear sound made the evening a real highlight. It is a pity that this the only gig THE CULT will play in Germany on this tour, but some other countries in Europe and the UK as well will have the opportunity to see them now.  GRIMM is very happy to present you a set of photos of the only German gig.

Rockfest, the biggest rock festival of Finland, that often brings some of the biggest names to the country was doing it again. With bands like Pantera, Def Leppard and Volbeat headlining, and a bunch of pretty cool bands on the rest of the line-up, after missing out on it last year, we just had to be at the 2023 edition!

On the third day of Rockfest 2023, we weren’t able to capture as many bands as on the earlier days due to other responsibilities and some artists not wanting any pictures to be taken, but we still caught the performances by Finnish legends Xysma and Rotten Sound on the Black Stage!

Rockfest, the biggest rock festival of Finland, that often brings some of the biggest names to the country was doing it again. With bands like Pantera, Def Leppard and Volbeat headlining, and a bunch of pretty cool bands on the rest of the line-up, after missing out on it last year, we just had to be at the 2023 edition!

On the third day of Rockfest 2023, we weren’t able to capture as many bands as on the earlier days due to other responsibilities and some artists not wanting any pictures to be taken, but we still caught killer performances on the Red Stage by Soundi by Igorrr, The Hellacopters and Beast In Black!

Rockfest, the biggest rock festival of Finland, that often brings some of the biggest names to the country was doing it again. With bands like Pantera, Def Leppard and Volbeat headlining, and a bunch of pretty cool bands on the rest of the line-up, after missing out on it last year, we just had to be at the 2023 edition!

On the third day of Rockfest 2023, we weren’t able to capture as many bands as on the earlier days due to other responsibilities and some artists not wanting any pictures to be taken, but we still caught epic shows on the main stage by Michael Monroe, and Volbeat!

Rockfest, the biggest rock festival of Finland, that often brings some of the biggest names to the country was doing it again. With bands like Pantera, Def Leppard and Volbeat headlining, and a bunch of pretty cool bands on the rest of the line-up, after missing out on it last year, we just had to be at the 2023 edition!

The second day, the Black Stage brought 3 very different takes on rock music with shows from Crashdiet, Nestor and Cleopatrick.

Rockfest, the biggest rock festival of Finland, that often brings some of the biggest names to the country was doing it again. With bands like Pantera, Def Leppard and Volbeat headlining, and a bunch of pretty cool bands on the rest of the line-up, after missing out on it last year, we just had to be at the 2023 edition!

The second day, the Red Stage by Soundi was the place to be for stellar performances by Von Hertzen Brothers, Escape The Faith, Testament and Stam1na.