Photo Reports

Ever since I moved to the lovely country of Finland, I somehow missed out on seeing Danko Jones every single time he was here. And that while I swore over a decade ago to catch a show of his anytime he came in my neighborhood… Time to finally rectify that somewhat! His first proper tour after the pandemic and back at the legendary Tavastia rock club in Helsinki for the first time in 5 years and I was there!

Finally! Igorrr made it to Finland for a show! Clearly I wasn’t the only one awaiting their arrival eagerly with a completely sold out Tavastia. Sadly, Drumcorps couldn’t make it all the way here as one of the support acts, but at least we still had the wackadoodle that is Otto Von Schirach to warm us up for the musical orgasm that would be Igorrr…

As many other bands and live events, Nightwish has had to postpone the start of their world tour in support of their latest album ‘Human. :||: Nature.’ time after time again the past couple of years. Now finally came the time that they could move forward with their show. After an epic start at the Nokia Arena in Tampere with well over 10 000 people (see the photo report here), a couple of days later they came down to Helsinki to hit up Jäähalli for another over 5000 excited music fans! And we were there for it as well!

Walpurgis Night has its origins in some pre-Christian traditions that took place on the eve of May 1st. The Vikings for example, commemorated the sacrifice of Wodan/Odin on this night. The Germans once believed that the gods Wodan and Freya drove out the winter demons that night to greet spring. On Walpurgis night the witches fly to the top of the Brocken for a witch ball with the assembled devils and demons.

On this special night we also celebrated the 9th birthday of GRIMM, at the same time the birthday of Lika Bosch, founder and president of GRIMM Gent. How could we have done better than with a pagan/folk metal party in our very own Asgaard venue!?

The new (and 3rd) official GRIMM beer ‘Folkvangr‘ is introduced, people drink from cow horns and the mead, the drink of the Gods, is liberally consumed, while we listen to the Belgian headliner Aktarum and warm-up acts Hert and Sorcières.

There is Desertfest Antwerp, Berlin, London,… but nothing of the sorts in Finland despite a pretty active stoner/psychedelic/doom scene. Time to change something about that, some people were clearly thinking. Enter the first ever Desert Hel festival for the heaviest stoner and doom music from Finnish shores and beyond. It promised to be a weekend full of loud & fuzzy shows, craft beer and psychedelic visuals and hopefully the start of a new yearly tradition after having to postpone it several times due to the pandemic! After a first night that pretty much filled On The Rocks to the brim, we were really looking forward what the Saturday night would give with shows from Khat Moses, Kaiser, Thermate, the by us much anticipated return to the stage of local rock heroes Blue Eyed Sons and the Norwegian rockers of Lonely Kamel as headliners!

Happy for the umpteenth Spoil Engine show I got to attend, but also sad, because it was the last one with Iris, and probably not just for me, but for many, Iris became an inseparable part of Spoil Engine! I already feel sorry for whoever has to follow up on her because that’s a tough – if not impossible – task ahead! For 7 years she has given us everything she had in her. She helped to make Spoil Engine what it is today. We’ve seen them many times live, and every time you couldn’t help but being deeply impressed by her appearance and her amazing voice!

They say all songs come to an end, and so does the Iris era! She decided to exchange the Netherlands for California, where the winters are warmer and there’s nothing we can do about that! However she has promised that we might meet her again in our regions in the summertime. After all, she has her roots here and so she intends to come back whenever she can.

At the end of the show Steven (Gaze) took the microphone to say a word of gratitude. He brought back memories of how Iris came knocking at Ace’s studio’s door for the audition 7 years ago. Ace must have then said to Steven: This is a natural talent, you have to take her in ’cause if you don’t,  I will! He also said a big thank you to all the fans who come out for live shows so that this kind of shows can continue to happen. In addition to the usual fans, we must also mention that the ex-members Matthijs, Bart, Steven and Nick were also present to attend this show.

A dignified closing you might call it. A show where she gave everything, as usual, but after the show, she also took the time to meet, and take pictures with… all the fans! Yes, all of them! (who wanted). The pictures were posted on their Facebook page the very next day. With ‘Stormsleeper’ playing in the background while writing this, we can only close with a heartfelt thank you for the past 7 years! Iris, you will be missed!

(Warm up act by Coffin Feeder)

First of all, just to be clear in case you didn’t know this yet: Eagles Of Death Metal is not a metal band. They give everyone a good time with the finest of rock and roll.

It was an honor to be presented to and get to know Dead Sara. Four killer musicians with great songs warming up the crowd. They are actually almost too good to be a support act.

And then when the main event started, it’s instantly clear, when all musicians of EODM come on stage, “we are family” is playing and Jesse Hughes is hyping up the crowd: we are all going to have fun together. After the first three songs all photographers had to bring all their equipment outside the venue. But I didn’t waste any time to run back into a packed Trix and enjoy a really great evening!

There is Desertfest Antwerp, Berlin, London,… but nothing of the sorts in Finland despite a pretty active stoner/psychedelic/doom scene. Time to change something about that, some people were clearly thinking. Enter the first ever Desert Hel festival for the heaviest stoner and doom music from Finnish shores and beyond. It promised to be a weekend full of loud & fuzzy shows, craft beer and psychedelic visuals and hopefully the start of a new yearly tradition after having to postpone it several times due to the pandemic! And with a quite busy first day, bands like Jupiter, Craneium, DÖ and as cherry on top, Lucifer in combination with their own festival beers, it was quite the start of our weekend!

Last Thursday I seemed to have wandered into the metal equivalent of Kamping Kitsch. A parade of ’80s track suits and cliché pimp costumes went all the way from the Noordersingel into Trix, Antwerp. And no fucks were given because we had one hell of a metal party. Starting off with One Morning Left. A metalcore band from Finland rocking synths and T-shirts with unicorns and rainbows. With titles like Sinners are Winners, !liaF cipE (Epic Fail!) and You’re Dead, Let’s Disco, they had me at hello. Next up were Blind Channel. Some may know these guys from representing Finland in the finals of the Eurovision Song Contest 2021. Others will know them as a emo/post-hardcore band with catchy songs. Either way, they’re a live band that sure knew how to warm up a crowd and a great fit in this line up. And then the moment we had all been waiting for. Electric Callboy (previously Eskimo Callboy) live on stage in Antwerp. Opening wearing their outfits from the Hypa Hypa video and firing confetti cannons into the crowd immediately set the mood for the rest of the evening.

Dagoba and Infected Rain are touring together as co-headliners on the “ECDYSIS BY NIGHT TOUR 2022”. We went out to have a look for you at the MEZZ in Breda (NL). A rather small venue (capacity 100 persons). The concert was not completely sold out (but still: almost) allowing us to still be able to move a little bit.

First up was Dagoba. Almost non stop headbanging, Shawter and his band sure know how to wake everybody up. When they followed up, Lena from Infected Rain drew special attention to the guy in the wheelchair in the front row who had been actively participating all night. A broken drum stick wasn’t thrown in the crowd, but was personally handed over to this guy instead. They also made some jokes about the size of the venue, such as asking if everyone was OK all the way in the back (which was no more than a couple of meters from the stage). At the end of the show they also said they had come to the point where they should go off stage and we should shout “we want more”, so they could come back up for the encores, only, since there was no place to hide for them, they just asked if we’d like some more and continued with it right away.

It was a very pleasant night out with two bands that are very entertaining and who are fun to check out live every single time!