Photo Reports

The travelling rock and metal festival dropped by Kerava again, and since it’s only a couple of minutes walking from where I live, how could I miss out on this event with a charming line-up of Finland’s popular bands and a nice selection of international acts? The second day was compared to the day before quite a bit more wet with regular bursts of rain, but that didn’t take away any of the fun with bands like Klamydia, Viikate, Stam1na, Melrose, Uriah Heep, Uniklubi, Accept, Cyan Kicks and rock legend Deep Purple to round the weekend up!

The travelling rock and metal festival dropped by Kerava again, and since it’s only a couple of minutes walking from where I live, how could I miss out on this event with a charming line-up of Finland’s popular bands and a nice selection of international acts? The first day was a quite sunny start of the weekend with bands like Mustasch, Turmion Kätilöt, Negatiiviset Nuoret, Dampf, Brother Firetribe, Lordi, Korpiklaani, Eppu Normaali and Popeda…

While they were in the country to play at John Smith Rock Festival, the popular Moldovan modern metal outfit Infected Rain dropped by Tampere and Helsinki for some hot and sweaty club shows. We didn’t want to miss out on the always great band to catch live, so off we went to On The Rocks in Helsinki. With them, they brought the Finnish band Awake Again, and we knew we were in for a great night of catchy modern metal music!

We were happy to attend the Gojira concert in Tilburg. The show was sold out in no time, so an additional show was added (and also sold out). Both shows had to be rescheduled due to the pandemic, but now it was finally there.

Over the many years that Gojira has been on stage, it is clear that they have grown fiercely in recent years. The show was great. The band members were clearly more in tune with each other than they were a few years ago, and the whole thing felt more natural than ever before. Also more mature was supporting act Alien Weaponry. Considering their young age, this can actually be considered literal. Both bands were preceded by English warm-up act Employed to Serve.

The Tollwood Festival is a festival that takes place every six months in the Olympiapark (summer) or on the Theresienwiese (winter) in Munich.
The festival’s programme is very diverse, always with a more popular side in order to attract the maximum number of visitors.

The BossHoss is a seven-member band from Berlin, formed in 2004. The group had their breakthrough in 2005 with country music-style interpretations of pop songs. Meanwhile, rhythm guitarist Hoss Power writes most of the band’s songs himself, as well as their most commercially successful single to date, “Don’t Gimme That”. The origin of the band’s name lies in the song Boss Hoss, released by The Sonics in 1965.

The Tollwood main stage tent was completely packed and the heat in Munich, especially inside, was simply scorching. The Berlin band as always perform in top physical form and the public adore them, they are probably the most popular band in Germany at the moment, with a diverse audience. It’s always good and fun to photograph these guys!

We would like to thank you for the sympathy shown to our reception, we are very happy and hope to come back again!

The passage of the American Goodbye June in Munich happened in the middle of the week, on a Wednesday and it is always risky to predict the affluence of the public, in this case, the Strom club in Munich managed to fill up to watch a night of rock n roll in its pure state. The average age in the room is guaranteed to be around 40 which shows that this is not a show for “kids”!

Scarlet Rebels act as the opening band for the current headliner, they are a classic melodic rock n roll band from a small town in Wales and proudly announce their achievements in the UK charts. With two albums out, the band managed to convince and entertain the audience, showing their music with great quality and maturity on stage. They also had time to send political messages related to the current situation of the UK Prime Minister.

After a nice warm up, the band from Nashville came on stage, I confess that I didn’t know them until recently, but as soon as I heard their songs my memory took me to compare them with classic bands like AC/DC or Led Zeppelin, which is good! The band exists since 2009 and in this tour they will present their latest work, released this year, called “See Where The Night Goes”. When we see these youngsters live, we go back to the time when the stages were almost naked, without many props that could distract our senses. The show is raw and we are absorbed by the genuine rock spirit, where organic instruments are played and there is an artistic express emergency after this obligatory stop because of the pandemic. Goodbye June is a band that deserves to be heard by many people, to have success and to be experienced live, on stage the Americans show that they were made to play for the people, and if on record they are good, live they are excellent in everything they do.

In short, it was a great night of rock at the Strom in Munich and who missed it was only those who were not present!

The main day of Sauna Open Air started with the always good Mokoma. After that Melrose played on the smaller stage. Cyan Kicks gave us quite a big show. Reckless Love around frontman Olli mostly played us their new songs from Turborider. Luckily we had time to regain our breath during Graveyard.
We had just as much fun as Klamydia on stage while listening to them. Skid Row gave us their all with their fast passed songs. Massive Wagons were one of the most entertaining bands I’ve ever seen. Danko Jones spiked their show with a lot of humour and jokes. Hardcore Superstar gave us quite a party, before the day ended with an amazing show by In Flames.

Faun are one of the world’s leading bands fusing ancient sounds with modern music and have released 10 studio CDs and 2 DVDs in the meantime. Their CD releases reach top positions in the German album charts (e.g. “Midgard” #3, “Luna” #4). They have also been nominated three times for the Echo, Germany’s biggest music award, and achieved platinum status with their CD “Von den Elben” and gold status with their CD “Luna”.

Faun have played over 900 concerts worldwide and are currently touring with various concert programmes, including a seated, quieter programme for theaters, churches and concert halls (FAUN ACOUSTIC), a cultural programme for seated concert halls, classical and romantic summer concerts and a lively, unseated festival show.

Two years after it was originally announced, the Faun show finally took place on Friday July 8th, 2022 with a completely sold out capacity at the Munich based Circus Krone. It is one of the biggest circuses in Europe and one of the few in Western Europe (along with the Cirque d’hiver de Paris, Cirque d’hiver d’Amiens and Cirque Royal in Brussels) to occupy a building as well. Over the course of a century, Circus Krone Imperium has become recognised worldwide as an institution within the circus world. Its remarkable success was based on the maxim “entrepreneurial spirit, love for animals and absolute seriousness”. This maxim has been maintained throughout the illustrious history of the family that owned and operated Circus Krone.

To celebrate finally this union, the band prepared an extensive repertoire that stretched over almost 3 hours of performance, with an announced break (circus style), and later two encores showing that the night seemed to come out of a fairy tale. The show put together is simply worth seeing. Simplicity, refinement, good taste and a great show of light and sound, without any flaws helps  Faun to consolidate the top level to which they belong, and the humility and genuineness with which they do their art deserves all the respect and admiration.

We would like to highlight and thank you for the excellent reception given to us at this event.

With better weather and more visitors, Day 2 of Sauna Open Air already started very nicely with Sister Sin. And the performances just got better as the day progressed. Dampf were a very pleasant surprise for me, while Doro is a legend that doesn’t even need to be introduced. Also Marko Hietala who filled in  for the unfortunately sick Saxon is well known in the Finnish metal scene and a welcome sight back on a stage and Tampere’s very own Nyrkkitappelu brought punk to the fest. Avantasia unfortunately didn’t have all of there equipment, as it got lost on the airport and in combination with some technical problems their actual play time got reduced by quite a bit, but they still did there best to give us a good show. Swedish metalcore greats Dead by April were full of energy just as our beloved Finnish heavy metallers of Battle Beast were. The Irish punks of Stiff Little Fingers were a bit of a contrast to most of the rest of the program, but fun non the less. Five Finger Death Punch we sadly didn’t get to photograph but as you may expect, it was quite the explosive show from these popular Americans.

The crowd was ALIVE at the downtown Columbus, Ohio venue, Kemba Live, on this warm July night. Starset was the headliner with support from Red and Divide The Fall. Upon walking into the venue, we were immediately impressed. There was already a big crowd, which was so good to see! We made our way through the sea of people down to the pit, and anxiously waited for the first band to take the stage.