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)

R.I.P. EffJott

Frank Jürgen Krüger was better known in Germany as "EffJott" Krüger. You have three guesses now whom I nicked my nickname from. EffJott was the guitar player for Ideal, a Berlin-based band too often labelled sadly NDW (Neue Deutsche Welle).

This "New German Wave" was an early 80ties phenomenon that didn´t have much to offer musically. Some kind of bubblegum pop punk without attitude, message or craftsmanship and sung in German - sounds like a threat, right?

There were exceptions to the rule and as it often goes, bands like Spliff, Trio and of course Ideal didn´t want to be called "originators" of a genre they didn´t feel part of, they just wanted to be original and create great music with German lyrics. In fact none of the aforementioned bands wanted to be associated with the term NDW at all, and when you look at what came after them, you see why.

Ideal was fronted by singer / keyboarder Annette Humpe but the coolest member was EffJott, an innovative player and real Gentleman - always stylissimo from top to toe.

Today he´s dead for five years and in his honor I give you a live version of "Hundsgemein" which roughly translates to rotten or scurvy. 

It´s a pissed off song and "sung" by the late great EffJott Krüger! Enjoy.

Major setback

U-turn...

Irony of fate:

Although blessed with a great timing, our drummer decided to leave the band remarkably untimely.

Now that we finally have the much anticipated demo ready to score us gigs, record deals, shit loads of money and - in the long run - world domination, [di: unru:] finds itself one member short.

All dressed up and nowhere to go.

...but I don´t

I made a decision, too:

No way I´m gonna cave in.
I will continue this one way or another.


JETZT ERST RECHT.

So if you consider yourself a good drummer, you´re living in / around Helsinki and you dig this, hit me up at di.unru@hotmail.com.

Out of sight, out of mind?

I´m back with a question: How fucking patronising has this society become?
I don´t need anybody to think for me, I regard myself as an adult, mature enough to make my own decisions. And if those decisons are good or bad for me should also be my concern only, especially when what I choose to do is legal.

So what drives me up the wall here?
Well, who knows me a bit might be surprised: it´s about smoking. Many got to know me as a nonsmoker and in a way, that´s what I am. Never bought a pack of cigarettes in my life. Probably never will. But from time to time I do enjoy puffing away a cigar or cigarillo. And those I do buy occasionally. Yesterday I was in the mood for some Moods or Sweets or something like it again, so I went to a K-Market in order to get my fix. Like a good boy I lined up at the cash desk and when it was my turn I asked if they sell cigarillos.

Now there´s one thing you should know in case you´re not living here:
From the first of January this year it is prohibited by law in Finland to display tobacco products. This led to the following scenario:

JottEff: "Hi, do you sell cigarillos?"
Clerk:   "Yes. What brand?"
              Opens the storage box containing the packs of smokes.
JottEff: "Er, I don´t know yet. What do you have?"
              I try to sneak a peek. Clerk closes the box again.
Clerk:   "I´m not sure, I don´t know much about cigarillos."
JottEff: "So could you show me your selection then?"
              Clerk appears now stressed out.
Clerk:   "No, sorry. I´m not allowed to do that."
              Now I start feeling stressed.
JottEff: "But how can I choose something from your selection when I don´t know your
             selection?"
Clerk:   "Well, I would have a list here. Maybe you find what you want on that list."

By now at least five customers where waiting behind me and the situation started to get uncomfortable. Did I want to make everybody wait even more while reading that long list? With the possibility of NOT finding anything I want?

JottEff:   "No, thanks."

My appetite was gone, which I guess is the exact desired effect of that stupid law. I didn´t blame the clerk, she was just playing by the rules. It´s only that these new rules for that old game suck pretty hard. Out of sight, out of mind?
Fuck you!

Commercial Break

Roller, cutter and a dead beat expression - the holy trinity of signmaking.

I am a signmaker by profession. Here you see our patron saint, the holy signmaker.
He died for our sins of making real bad advertisement. Happy Easter, I´m off to Pori now.

It´s happening...

...again!
We thought we were over with it,
but no - takatalvi! That means winter came back with temperatures below zero and lately also a lot of snow. Here in Helsinki it comes most of the time overnight and melts during the day, when all that stuff starts falling from the roofs kamikaze style. Look at that lovely picture. I took it yesterday from a store window and lucky me was peeping out instead of in. I didn´t see the lump of ice crashing into the car but I damn sure heard the impact. Must have been the owners fortunate day cause the ice didn´t only kill his rear window but he had also placed his car in a no-parking zone. I wonder what the insurance company is gonna say about that. Well, you can have a window replaced, it gets more difficult with your head.

SONG FOR TODAY:

Scream - Came Without Warning

di unru demo

After what felt like an eternity, our first demo "Unruhige Zeiten" is out now!
4 smash hits not only in a nice little package but also in the exact frequency that will soothe your tinnitus and cure your migrane. Hit us up at di.unru@hotmail.com
or on Facebook (where you can listen to all songs) if you want one.

Tombstoned in Baltimor

Last Friday I went to Lepakkomies for the (on my behalf) highly anticipated Baltimor show. I was pretty thrilled to see them again on stage after their great gig at Pub Sir Oliver a bit more than a month ago. Back then I had never heard of them and I was in for a surprise! They stood out like a sore thumb AND stole the show that night with their punk fused metal attack. Absolutely great stuff and I wanted more of that. Friday the time had finally come, so off I went to pay Batman (that´s what Lepakkomies means) an overdue visit.

As appetizer and counter point to the upcoming metal madness J. Kiesi broke the first ground. Quite stylishly sitting on a chair he and his acoustic guitar lured the audience into a world of Finnish sung folk and country, which I bet was unknown territory for some of the spectators.

By the way: he should not remain the only musician sitting on stage that night.

But back to Kiersi: despite the total contrast to everything that was yet to come he managed to draw a good crowd that was obviously digging his songs. And I did, too. Nice to see some open-mindedness in action, a virtue the metal scene is often claimed not to have. But with his well-crafted songs he had them eating out of the palm of his hand. Way to go, J.

Next up was United Seafood, what a name. A little birdy told me right before their set that the band is a side project of friends who all play in other combos. Birdy also told me this was going to be their first show ever and that they´re shaking like a leaf with stage fright.

Although you could tell that the Seafood boys were a bit nervous, there was actually no reason for it. Their performance was real solid and old school metal was the name of the game. The set was short but sweet and I guess we´ll be hearing from United Seafood soon again. Gladly so.

Then it was time for dooooooooooooom! The event was sold out when Tombstoned hit the stage. And with them came a wall of sound, the sound of Sabbath meets Vitus meets Cheer and they fucking delivered the goods!

I give you a blurry one cause my flash killed their projection on the wall.

How can you play doom metal without sounding just a bit like the aforementioned bands? You can´t. But you can be just a lame copy or you can have something unique and the latter is definitely the category Tombstoned belong to. Hypnotic, heavy and unstoppable like a slow locomotive. The projections emphasized the hypnotic element even more! I can only say that Tombstoned was truly mind-blowing that night. Had a little chat with the drummer and the bass player who confirmed that soon two 7" are being released. Plus there is an obscure tape coming out- in France of all places!

Then the mighty Baltimor took the crowd by storm. Double bass thunder, distorted bass, twin lead guitar lines and singer Iro´s gnarly growl. A marriage made in heaven! (Or was it the other direction?) I dig them so much because they mix the right amounts of old school metal with a snotty punk attitude and shake it up to an explosive molotov cocktail. Obviously I wasn´t the only one with that notion as the crowd went absolutely bananas!

Baltimor´s bass man fought through the show with a broken leg, a result of a skateboarding stunt gone bad. Talk about street credibility! Although he had a chair to rest on in-between songs, he just couldn´t sit during their assault - and believe me, nobody could! The set felt like a big party, fists in the air, beer squirting across the room, sing-along! Later the guys told me that there would be enough material for a full-length but no label yet to put it out. Somebody give them a deal already! I want that on vinyl!!

Make sure to check out:

J. Kiesi
United Seafood
Tombstoned
Baltimor