Last year we got to visit Tuska Open Air for the first time. The event is the biggest metal festival in THE country of metal: Finland. Taking place at a former energy plant turned event area called Suvilahti  in Helsinki, at the end of June/beginning of July the amps get plugged in and turned to 11 for one of the coolest metal and rock gatherings there are. This year things were even more special since it was Tuska’s 20th anniversary. So we geared up for what promised to be one of the biggest celebrations of the year!

Tuska Heatseeker

As always, the Thursday before the official start of the festival there’s a pre-party to get in the mood. Since last year Tuska has baptized their official pre-party “Heatseeker”. Back then, the line-up consisted out of up-coming and bigger bands from Finland that all set the much loved Tavastia Club in Helsinki on fire.

This year the organisation went mostly the same way. They brought us the Finnish heavy metal outfit Psychework and symphonic power metal band Arion. Sadly, we didn’t make it on time to the venue to catch either one of these bands. But we recommend you to check them out, they have some good stuff going for them.

The one different band on the bill this time was the Japanese band Man With A Mission (****). Much to the delight of many (of which me personally as well), one of the biggest surprises and discoveries of last year’s Tuska returned to Finland to raise one hell of a party again. We just couldn’t miss out on seeing this group of really cool man-wolves again, so we made sure we got there in time to at least catch them.

And what a pleasant reunion it was! As soon as they took the stage they blasted us away with their highly catchy and infectious blend of metal, rock, punk and a touch of J-pop. Just recently they released an album with a few new tracks and some of their older work as a better introduction to the rest of the world (for our review go here). Right from the start they kicked off the gig with really high energy which only went up more when playing the extremely catchy Give it Away. A big highlight for me was the series of about 5 songs that started with the very Fall Out Boy sounding Dead End in Tokyo (with a shitload of hit potential) and brought some of the strongest songs of their The World’s On Fire album like Get Off of My Way, Raise Your Flag and Seven Deadly Sins. The wolf claws were raised by the band and crowd on regular occasions and the love between both sides of the stage was oh so clear.

Since they were headlining, they had more room for a longer setlist, but also to play one of their anime clips about the history of the guys, much to the joy of everyone present. Of course shortly after the eyes of some of the wolves got lit up and the room exploded one last time with the encore songs Dog Days and Emotions. I can’t get enough of this rather wacko band, please come back soon!