SATURDAY

I don’t think there’s ever been much clearer profiling in Tuska Open Air’s history as there was on June 29th. The second day of the festival saw bands kriss kross (mac daddy up, yo) between death, punk, hardcore, thrash and crossover with a bit of black thrown into the mix. Lost Society, who also played at Sauna Open Air, kicked the day off with what I believe — without seeing — was an energetic set full of youthful passion for thrash metal that undoubtedly won them a ton of news fans. There was something poetic about the day being finished off by thrash metal legend Testament. It was a bit of a bummer to miss them, but hell, morning sleep is nice.

Soilwork

After a long breakfast, the first act I got around to see was Soilwork, whom many believe released their best album in ages with The Living Infinite. Not surprisingly the set concentrated on their new endeavors, with the oldest song coming off of Natural Born Chaos. It would have been nice to get something off A Predator’s Portrait, but what can you do? While the band acted out its spiel accordingly, aside from bassist Ola Fink’s shenanigans, to my surprise Soilwork didn’t seem to be exactly the most inspiring live band around.

Butters

Germany’s We Butter The Bread With Butter was next in line with their orchestrated metalcore, and it did absolutely nothing for me. As expected with bands of the kin, they seemed to show some activity on stage, but musically it seemed that there wasn’t anything that would have stood out. Supposedly they began as a joke band of sorts but found enough success to warrant becoming a real band. To me however, instead of buttering the bread like everyone else, maybe they should have thought about making other things with bread… like hats for cats.

Luckily De Lirium’s Order were granted a generous 25-minute slot at the third stage, which they used to the max. Victim No. 52 was one of the best releases of 2004 for me and while I missed 2007’s Diagnosis, the band came back in a big way with last year’s Veniversum. Their technically capable death metal rolled better live than I expected, becoming one of the highlights of the second day. If you haven’t already, now’s the time to check the band out.

Stam1na. Again. That’s okay.

As seen over at Sauna Open Air, Stam1na brought their very own beach party to Suvilahti. Not much had changed from the gig from a few weeks back, other than some more beach props and leadman Antti “Hyrde” Hyyrynen sporting a wetsuit with a clear bulge in the crotch area. Again, the band put on a whirlwind of a show without physically sparing themselves even for a brief moment. Come to think of it, perhaps they played with even a bit more aggression than last time, all the while joking about how Helsinki is more civilized of a place compared to the rest of the country. If I read the faces of a few international guests correctly, they were quite surprised by the band’s blast radius. Just as they should. I think due to the recent gigs from Stam1na, I’m actually starting to find the band again myself.

Suicidal Tendencies… oh wait, no!

But, since I’d seen most of it before, I decided to go indoors and see how Dr. Living Dead! fared at the club stage. And fared they did with their crossover, as they made quite a homage to Suicidal Tendencies and the likes, thrashing out some tunes as if it were the ’80s again. So much so that I was quite surprised they were from Sweden and not California. The skull mask donning group whipped a reaction out of the audience convincingly, granting me the opportunity to pat myself on the back for being such a good philanthropist for giving new people a chance to redeem themselves.

Von didn’t win.

The biggest fail of the festival manifested itself on stage in the form of “legendary USBM band” Von. I don’t care if they’re the originators of something, first to pop American black metal cherry or anything of the like, but their music certainly didn’t warrant a reaction of any kind — let alone a reason for their existence on the second stage, especially when there were many bands playing indoors who might have appreciated the attention of the bigger stages (granted — a lot of those bands probably did better in an intimate indoor environment). The only good thing on during Von was the second guitarist who actually seemed to show any passion for playing and give a shit. Too bad for him the song material he had to work with didn’t leave a better impression.

Kreator’s Mille

Kreator were there to cleanse the taste of shit from the mind, the soul and the body with their teutonic thrash metal, which they did for a while, mainly spewing fresh material from their metal machine. But, eventually I found myself drifting off to different thoughts. While there wasn’t anything to criticize with Kreator’s performance, I began to wonder if the band still was really that relevant today or were people still rooting for them solely based on their past achievements? I wouldn’t know since the last album I’ve heard from them was Violent Revolution. I tried to wake myself up for Kreator by watching a couple of songs from Finnish samurai metallers Whispered — who had their faces painted all kabuki — but that didn’t do much for me either.

Finnish punk legends, Lama

Next up were Finnish punk legends Lama (on Inferno-stage) and Dutch black metal duo Urfaust, who’d made a home on the club stage. The first spat vitriol with their old-school Finnish punk, much to the amusement of foreign visitors. Frontman Jari “Epe” Kronholm ran amok on stage, doing his best to act unpredictable and showing some similarities with Napalm Death’s Barney. Lama was originally active in the early ‘80s but in the recent years, seems to have begun popping up again more and more. While I do appreciate the legacy, I don’t think I was part of the proper audience. After some songs, I concentrated on Urfaust’s hypnotic and mesmerizing black metal. There was an odd scent lingering inside the boiler room to reinforce the fact of a ritual of sorts taking place, with candles lit on front the stage. The two piece’s performance was interesting, as drummer VRDRBR provided a very visual way to beat the shit out of the drums, whereas guitarist and singer IX was more static, letting his distinctive screeching add to the mix.

Saturday marked the first time for Testament to headline a day (rightfully so) at Tuska — and the third time I’ve seen them live at the festival. This was also the third time I’ve been left wanting to hear material off of Low and Demonic — the two criminally underrated albums, especially considering how good of a live album Live at the Fillmore is.

Testament

Instead, the audience received an expected setlist with new songs first and a barrage of old songs later on. While “Rise Up” and “Native Blood” worked quite well, “Dark Roots of Earth” was a bore live for me. What I can’t criticize is Testament as a live act; a joy to watch, listen and to me it looked like the band also had a ton of fun, with Chuck constantly giving out props to the audience. Thrash was all over and showed up in a big way; at one point Chuck threw a drum stick into the audience (along with thousands of guitar picks) to a special someone, but a wrong guy got it. “It was for the kid… The little one” Chuck contested and after a short confusion, Chuck gestured his respects to the guy giving the stick to its intended, rightful owner. One thing I also noticed this time around, besides seeing Jere Lehtinen in the audience again, was how Greg Christian has a really shiny way to play the bass. Dude lives the music.

Soilwork’s Björn Strid was summoned up for “Alone in the Dark” to sing along but the guy turned out to be a total pedestrian, not knowing the words or what to do with himself on stage. The whole thing would have been Top 5 material for the most awkward live moments of the year had Chuck Billy been anyone other than Chuck Billy. Luckily the man saved whatever there was to be saved of the painful moment and proceeded to interact with the audience, trying to get the Tuska crowd to be heard all the way back home in San Francisco (“To all my friends in Exodus/Forbidden/Metallica/Death Angel” etc). Unfortunately, to my ears, as the show progressed, Chuck seemed to have problems with the clean, fast parts of the songs — sometimes going a bit illegible with the words, but I couldn’t tell if it was due to him faltering a bit or the mixing. Growls and grunts came out as expected though, and the man helms the band on stage admirably.

Since I hadn’t eaten a goddamn thing that day, I left into the warm Helsinki night to find some food while the last three songs (“D.N.R.”,  “3 Days in Darkness” and “The Formation of Damnation”) played in the background to a satisfied audience. But please, more Low and Demonic thank you!