di unru at Porispere 2012?

Dear blogheads, your help is needed! My band [di unru] is competing with two other bands to play at the Porispere Festival in August. The band that gets the most votes on the Facebook page of Radio Pori wins. If we make it, we´re gonna share the stage with Turbonegro, Marky Ramone and Sacred Reich!!!

So pretty please with sugar on top, do uncle JottEff a favor and vote for [di unru]!

In case you don´t speak Finnish, that´s no problem. You will see a box on the wall with the three band names (Six Minutes After, Rust N´ Rage and [di unru]). Just click on our band name to vote - easy as that. Your help is much appreciated!

Here´s the link:

Radio Pori

Make sure to check out:

[di unru]

Much Nothing About Ado

Let´s face it- the summertime seems to be a bit uninspiring for my blog writing, which is kinda odd cause things DO happen here and topics keep on poppin´up. Strange.
Last year we witnessed the same phenomenon, and it even turned into a half-year hiatus. Actually I don´t want this to happen again, still I can´t bring myself to update frequently lately, basically due to the same lame excuses. A lot of work, weekends filled with all kinds of activities and of course the whole band business.
And no summer holiday, I might add!

Anyhow, to not let this month pass by without a single word from the author, lemme just say that, besides all that stress, I´m doing pretty well.  I survived last weekend´s Juhannus, 16 others didn´t. That must be the lowest death toll in years, just a couple of stabbings, shootings and the classic drowning (beer+schnapps+sausages+sauna+swimming=death).

Tomorrow I´m off to the Tuska Festival here in Helsinki. Metal up your ass, brothers and sisters! It´s held over the whole weekend and brings us Exodus, Overkill, Megadeth, Ministry, Saint Vitus and whatnot. Best thing is - the festival aria is in walking distance from casa del JottEff. Less money for cab rides, more money for beer, hell yeah!

If I survive this one, too, we´ll hear again on this channel.

Make sure to check out:

Tuska Festival 2012

Extrablatt! Extrablatt!

Was that almost three weeks of silence? Well, it´s not that nothing would have happened since my last post, rather on the contrary. But as you know, we´re living in busy times and the time-frame for a new entry did not present itself until now. And lo and behold!
I got quite some news to tell:

[di: unru:] has found a new drummer! To be exact, he actually found us (thank you, marvellous muusikoiden.net page). His name is Antti Meriläinen, he´s originally from Oulu and a real powerhouse behind the kit! We´re pretty stoked about our new member and can not wait to get the band back on track.

And if Antti´s enthusiasm wouldn´t be enough already to do the trick, the following is surely kicking our asses real good: A brilliant review of our first demo in the latest issue of Inferno, THE magazine for heavy music in Finland!

Click to enlarge

And here´s a translation in case your Finnish is a bit rusty:

"[di: unru:] is a Finnish-German trio that jams somewhere between punk, heavy-rock and metal. The band´s simple attack is incredibly compelling and cultivates an AC/DC-like uncomplex primal force and catchy melodies.
Although you can´t find another masterpiece like the bank-breaking opener Soapbox Dictator on the record, the group´s manly attitude crushes everything underneath it masterfully. The three-man collaboration is an enjoyable listen and Jan Ferres´ rough vocals fit in like a nose to a face. It´s a known fact that the fewer parts you have in a machine, the more likely it is to function. And of this fact the band is a great token. Perfect playing and perfect rock songs with a rigid attitude."

Things are looking up again, at last!

Make sure to check out:
[di: unru:] on Facebook

You need two to tango

But two times two hundred are better, as you can see in the pic above! I took it on Vapunaatto, which is celebrated by students and everyone else who´s thirsty on the last of April. Yes, one day before the 1st of May, the Workers´ Day, or Vappu, as the Finns call it. That way, they figured, you have two (days) to tango. Those Finns are smart! And thirsty! And they like their Tango!

So what you see in the pic is just becoming a new Vappu tradition here in Helsinki. For the third consecutive year the district Vallila invited everybody to have a little dance, Tango of course! A funny and interesting spectacle that surprisingly attracts mostly younger people than one would expect. Also the band, that churned out timeless classics by the number, was far away from being old farts.

I felt very much like a student (because I was so thirsty) and enjoyed myself tremendously (later that night I almost felt like a professor). So much more relaxed than the annual war in the city center with intoxicated teenagers and flying fists.

SONG FOR TODAY:

Eino Grön - Illan viimeisen tango

Metal up your ass

I know, I know, I´m late again. The Judas Priest show in Jäähalli took place already a week ago but what are a couple of days compared to the incredible longevity of that lot of leather-lads. Formed 1699, er..1969 in Birmingham, England they have preached the word of heavy metal for over 40 years!

Now in 2012 the band was said to scream their last goodbye on JP´s Epitaph farewell tour. Lately it seems though that the Priest is far from demitting as the metal gods are writing new material, plan to record their 17th studio album AND tour, if only on a smaller scale than touring the world for two years. Maybe this is a first hint that the Mayan predictions about this year´s end of the world are not true at all.

Anyway, the show in Jäähalli was obviously designed to be their swansong and for two and a half hours we got a best-of program spiced with over-the-top bombast like changing back-drops, animated visuals, the trademark motorcycle bit, lasers and explosions!
Wham-bam, thank you, ma´am!

Pic by Arno Pokkari for Imperiumi.

The sound was quite good but it didn´t sit well with me that Richie Faulkner, new hotshot on second guitar and replacement for original member K.K. Downing, was so much louder than Glenn Tipton. Tipton is an absolutely underrated guitar player that helped shape the sound of heavy metal as we know it. Plus when it comes to soloing, he doesn´t need to hide behind all those new "shredders".

Rob Halford´s voice was strong and clear, the metal god presented himself in good shape. Only the very high notes, of which I´m not a huge fan anyway, seemed a bit ot of reach. Other than that - no complains. The setlist may not have pleased everyone, but that´s impossible if you have to cram 40 years into 2,5 hours. I enjoyed the gig very much, sometimes because it was so cool, all of the time because it was so corny.

Judas Priest is larger than life and the line between marvellous and unintentionally hilarious paper thin. They make use of almost every heavy metal cliché, just bare in mind that they invented or cultivated a big bunch of those chlichés themselves.

Pic by Arno Pokkari for Imperiumi.

When they launched into Starbreaker, the back-drop changed of course to the Sin After Sin cover with it´s temple pillars. Susu immediately screamed "Stonehenge" into my ear and I howled "Spinal Tap" back into hers. And guess what: the previous week YLE Teema had shown the Classic Albums episode for JP´s British Steel, in which Halford admits that when he saw the Spinal Tap movie for the first time, he thought it was a genuine documentary. He didn´t get the joke at all because everything that flick makes fun of was so close to his everyday life in his own band. Yeah!

Sing-a-long followed sing-a-long that night and songs like Metal Gods, Hellbent For Leather and Breaking The Law (no sing-a-long but a sing-it-yourself with Halford pointing his mic to the crowd) are nothing but all-time classics. The crowd favorite Turbolover will always make me smile because I have to imagine all these mustached, homophobic metal fans, yelling the chorus for 12 years until developing serious ablutomania in 1998, the year Halford came out of the closet. Ha ha!

To wrap things up I only gotta say that the whole spectacle turned out to be exactly THE heavy metal extravaganzy everyone had come for. Judas Priest proved that they can still deliver the goods 40 years after their foundation and corny or not - I´m looking forward to hearing the new material asap.

Make sure to check out:

Judas Priest 

Imperiumi 
(Finnish online metal magazine I "borrowed" the pics from.
There´s also a great review of that night. In Finnish, of course)