Photo Reports
While GRIMM celebrated their 9th anniversary, Fat Bastard Promotions invited Batushka (Poland) to visit Asgaard on their 2022 Black Liturgy Pilgrimage tour and Diabolical (Sweden) as part of their 25th anniversary tour.
Batushka’s black metal act summons pilgrims over and over again. A sold out Asgaard proves that they don’t want to miss the liturgy!
Warm up act was Polish black metal band Hore!
The Swedish indie rock outfit The Sounds is a highly popular band, especially in the Nordic region, including Finland. After a couple of delays due to the pandemic like many other tours, it finally was happening! Because of how fast the 1st date sold out, Fullsteam Agency and Tavastia quickly announced a 2nd date, that’s how popular the return of The Sounds was! We joined the mass of fans on the sold out date and were ready for quite the energy boost and rock party! Support came from local pop/R&B star Isaac Sene.
May 4th, 2022 at Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, IN was about the halfway point of Breaking Benjamin‘s month-long spring tour with Seether, Starset and Lacey Sturm. With a lineup of seasoned musicians, it was a night of strong talent. From Lacey’s intimate acoustic set, to Starset‘s dynamic lights and production, Seether‘s 2 decades of experience, and Breaking Benjamin‘s melodic rock sounds, it was an evening not soon to be forgotten.
Ever since I discovered the magical world that Kælan Mikla brings with them whenever they take over a stage, I try to catch these mesmerizing nymphs whenever they’re in the neighborhood. It was since they came to Helsinki as support for Alcest before the pandemic hit, so I knew I couldn’t miss out on them showing up at On The Rocks in the beginning of May. With the in 2020 released album ‘Undir Köldum Norðurljósum’ in their pockets, they came to take us on a magical trip, with support from the equally intriguing US artist Kanga who also came to present her latest album ‘You and I Will Never Die’.
Sometimes you need something good and fun to get your weekend properly started on a Friday night. The Swedish/Norwegian sleaze rock outfit The Cruel Intentions could be the perfect solution for you. They came to set On The Rocks on fire with quite the rock ‘n’ roll party! We even got the honor to hear their latest singles from the upcoming new album ‘Venomous Anonymous’ live as the very first in the world! Those explosive tracks together with their older work really set up a banging atmosphere with plenty of booze flowing… We really couldn’t have thought of a better act to celebrate the start of the weekend!
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!
