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

D.I.Y. or die - Osuuskunta 82

Osuuskunta 82 is something I most definitely support! And if you live in the area (or the country, what does it matter) and want an independent venue that is unique, far away from corporate bullshit and in it for the cause, then you should, too. At the moment the cooperative is organizing gigs in Helsinki to raise money for a nice place to go insane. I caught a great punk extravaganza almost three weeks ago.

Fuck man, the leap year bestowed an extra day upon us and still I wasn´t able to eke out a review of that show. It took place in Merihaka, easily one of the ugliest parts of town and only a ten minute walk for me away. Go figure, haha! I was badly prepared that night, had left my camera at home and relied on the crappy substitute in my cellphone - big mistake.

Click to enlarge 

That´s not only a bummer because the "venue" Sir Oliver was quite a sight (a shabby corner bar amongst the concrete jungle) filled with punks and crusties, it of course also means no pictures from the bands playing that night.
Won´t happen again, that´s a promise!

Due to a growing Korsakoff´s syndrome it´s a bit too late for a proper review anyway, so I only give you this:

Check out Baltimor if you dig Iron Maiden on speed with growling punk vocals (my fave that night!), give Perikato a try if you are into speedcore à la Siege and D.R.I. (a-ma-zing drummer!), feast on Särkyneet if female-fronted power pop in Finnish is to your taste (very tight combo!) and absolutely lose it with Ydinperhe if you crave old school hardcore as much as I do (Finnish lyrics, 2 gals + 2 guys and did I already mention OLD SCHOOL?!).

Well, you´ll find all links below as usual but let´s go back to the main topic:
Osuuskunta 82. I guess I´ll put them on a pedestal now and instead of paraphrasing their pamphlet, I´ll give you the original flyer which was given to me at the show:

Make sure to check out:

Osuuskunta 82 (in Finnish)
Baltimor
Perikato (their complete tape on YouTube)
Särkyneet
Ydinperhe

Riddle me this

Actually I had been looking forward to post a review of last night´s concert in Jäähalli.
By the time I left the venue though my enthusiasm had already vanished in a puff of smoke. How can I possibly review something that I fail to understand without calling it complete and utter bullshit in every second sentence?

That mistake has been made countless times by "music critics".
Would I want, let´s say, a Britney Spears fan to review my music? NO WAY!
Well, I´m no Britney Spears fan and the allegory is maybe a bit exaggerated.
I am by no means a music critic either but a musician and devoted fan of (mostly) heavy music, be it punk, hardcore or metal. So what you´re reading here isn´t cast in stone, it´s my opinion only and you know what Dirty Harry said about opinions:


Opinions are like assholes

What I came to see were Ghost, who stood out like a sore thumb and played a set way too short, comprised of only five or six songs. Still their show was awesome and I´m happy that I finally got to see them! Hopefully the next time will be a club gig, where they can play more songs. Unfortunately, both Ghost and me were misplaced in that big ice rink (=jäähalli) last night and the "crowd", filling maybe 2/5 of the venue, reflected that.

About the rest of the package...hmm...well, first off, I missed Insense, who had to start the festival at 5.15pm, so I can´t say anything about them. And now for the tricky part.
To use yet another metaphor, with my taste in music I felt most of the time like a compass needle pointing in exactly the opposite direction. Not knowing most of the other bands at all I went to the event with a slight premonition of things to come but was still surprised when it hit me: tagged metalcore (Rise to Remain, Trivium) and melodic death metal (In Flames), the genres sounded interesting. I had no concept of metalcore and had somehow figured that metal + (hard)core = metalcore must be cool, mais au contraire, chéri!
It proved to be a bunch of unlistenable bullshit. There - I said it!

Thanks to Rise to Remain and Trivium, metalcore equals for me from now on good musicianship and very bad music that tries to be everybody´s darling. In Flames were a riddle to me as well. When I finally left Jäähalli they were still playing for their audience, which almost filled up the venue by then. The crowd loved them and there´s nothing wrong with that. It was their territory after all, they had come to see their heroes and it was me who somehow had stepped through a wrong door into a parallel universe I don´t belong.
If that´s the future of metal and/or hardcore, they can have it.
I don´t want it.

To end this post on a conciliary note, I´d like to mention at least something positive about the bands:

- Rise to Remain features Bruce Dickinson´s son on vocals
(see Iron Maiden: "Dickinson of a Dickinson")

- Trivium´s guitar players were quite impressive

- In Flames had a nice light show

Make sure to form your own opinion here:

Insense
Rise to Remain
Ghost
Trivium
In Flames

SONG FOR TODAY:

Minor Threat - I don´t wanna hear it

Disco in

Lo and behold, dear blogheads!

Next Friday, 11.11.11. - a date that you simply can´t forget - yours truely is gonna spin the wax in Dubrovnik Lounge, owned by famous Finnish directors Aki and Mika Kaurismäki! We have already the next big movie happening coming up in Helsinki, this time it´s the 

short movie festival. The HLEF is gonna be held in three different venues, namely the cinema Orion, Andorra and said Dubrovnik. The latter will be besieged on that Friday by the Future Shorts club Helsinki who will show six short movies from different countries, among them are USA, Germany and Australia. A few words about Future shorts:

It´s a worldwide organisation dedicated to short movies which started out with its first chapter 2003 in London. FS has spread over many countries since its foundation and Finland is one of them, having chapters in Helsinki, Turku, Tampere, Pori and Rovaniemi. 

My friend Rasmus belongs to the Helsinki crew. Needless to say that they will be part of the HLEF and since they wanted a DJ for the night, he asked me if I´d like to do the job.

"Hell yeah!" was my reply cause I´ve always liked to be behind the turntables at cool events. Back in the day in Germany I had a DJ slot every two weeks in a crazy little bar which was good fun. I have kinda missed that and am happy I´m given the opportunity now.

First time in Finland! Expect the unexpected!

There will also be a band playing. Folk punk duo Jaakko & Jay hits the stage after the movies, armed with only acoustic guitar and a sparse drum kit they fit into the smallest corner but manage to make big waves, check em out! I´m on during the breaks and after the band - then the evil entity known as JottEff will take over completely! 

Dubrovnik Lounge & Lobby

Eerikinkatu 11

8pm - sometime after 2am 

Admission: 7€+2,50€ jacket

Make sure to check out:

Future Shorts Event, 11.11.11 (no English, sorry)

Future Shorts homepage

Dubrovnik Lounge & Lobby

Jaakko & Jay

Night of the living DEAD ELVIS

When there´s no more room in hell, Dead Elvis will walk the earth.

Last night the undead king of rock ´n´ roll did exactly that as he is haunting Finland at the moment. His first stroll on finnish mortal soil took him to Bar Loose and of course I was there to attend upon His Majesty.

Let me shortly explain what that guy is all about. If you haven´t heard about him before, you might think: "Oh boy, yet another Elvis impersonator. Squeezed into that horrible 70ties suit with no singing skills but a big bag full of bad song choices. No, thank you..." That is precisely what I thought when his name popped up for the first time. Luckily I checked out some of his tunes on the interrrNJET and was surprised to find no covers but some raw and raunchy originals!

Turned out that the aptly named DEAD ELVIS & HIS ONE MAN GRAVE is a one man band that has more in common with the likes of Hasil Adkins and Charlie Feathers then Mr. Presley. His gimmick is to pretend to be the resurrected Elvis Aaron, finally free from all the Priscillas and Col. Parkers. Now he´s the one calling the shots and handles all instruments (guitar, bass and snare drum) himself while crooning to the smash hits he wrote in his grave. Great stuff indeed but the real thing is to see DE perform live, because that man is outrageously funny! I have seen him at least 4 times back in Germany and everytime he had me in stitches. Very nice and humble guy, too. I met him unmasked (he was) before a show in Bonn, we had a little chat and he proved to be an overall no-rockstar-bullshit guy.

Now you can imagine that I was very thrilled when I got the info about his upcoming Finland tour and the gig in Helsinki. It´s not his first time over here, if I recall correctly it must be already the third. His link to Suomi is the two man band BLACK MAGIC SIX. I saw them with DE at the Sonic Ballroom in Köln and they kicked some serious ass. Needless to say that the two Finns are on the bill this time around, too. The unholy package is wrapped up with KAROSHI LOVERS (also from Finland) and HOLA GHOST from Denmark.

Let me now quickly drop a few words about Bar Loose, the venue where the whole spectacle went down last night. I like the place a lot and I warmly recommend it to you. If you are in Helsinki and into good rock music don´t hesitate to pay the joint a visit. Bar Loose operates on two levels, of course both of them have a bar. Upstairs you get warm food and hot turntable music, the real magic happens downstairs where the bands are playing. Sound is always good and you should just have a look on the long list of combos that performed there!

Could the similarity be a coincidence?

Daaaaamn right...

You have to show Angus your ticket before descending to R´n´R hell. 

None of the bands on the Black Rainbow Tour have a conventional line-up which I think makes the whole thing even more interesting. It´s cool if you get tempted to check out the opening bands as well instead of only coming for the main act. So the only bummer of a otherwise great evening was that we missed out KAROSHI LOVERS, who started their set way earlier than announced by Bar Loose. It´s a pity because their blend of styles sounded quite interesting. As stated on their homepage they mix hard guitars with a Blondie meets PJ Harvey vibe. You actually can´t do wrong with an album called "Death Pop" either. They would have been the closest to a normal band, having three members in a drums - guitar - piano/vocals constellation.

Karoshi Lovers

So the first band we got to see was BLACK MAGIC SIX and my-o-my, it is amazing how much noise just two guys can produce when armed with a miniature drum kit and a Stratocaster, run through some mean pedals and a Marshall amp. They played a highly distorted melange of garagy, blues-infested hardrock for lack of a better descpription. High energy was the name of the game and I somehow liked them better this time, compared to the show I saw a few years back in Germany.

Black Magic Six at work. The drummer must have some serious back problems.

The crowd dug ´em as well and after 45 minutes they left behind a satisfied audience. Next up was my personal surprise act, a surprise in a way that I didn´t expect sooo much from them but they absolutely nailed it! HOLA GHOST, yet another two man band, includes guitar slinger Peter Sandorff (ex-Nekromantix and Mad Sin) and a vintage drum machine. I think Sandorff must manage damn well to alienate more than 50 % of his former following instantly with his current project, a following that he build up with the aforementioned psychobilly institutions. "No stand-up bass? Drum machine? Get outta here...", I hear them say and even I was sceptical, but let me tell you: when they hit the stage every doubt was eliminated. I think their attempt to combine Sandorff´s rockabilly-tinted punk attack with a distorted bass and this funny, eighties-sounding drum machine really worked out remarkably well.

From left to right: Drum machine, Jeppe Jessen, Peter Sandorff

Sandorff proved already in Nekromatix that he is a good songwriter and I think he´s a good singer, too. He´s making no exception with HOLA GHOST, the tunes were real catchy and that drum machine gave their spaghetti-western like "flamencore" a beat you can dance to. I especially liked that some melodies were played by that distorted bass instead of the guitar which gave the sound a nice twist. They also showed some good humor when they introduced the band and did not forget to mention the drum machine. They did that in the middle of a song and thus had programmed that thing so that it played some ridiculous fills when being mentioned by the band. Great show!

And then - finally- to the typical See, See Rider intro, he made his way to the stage, shaking (guys) and kissing (girls) hands. Like said before, I´ve seen DEAD ELVIS a couple of times before. But although every artist has a certain routine, his gigs never feel like a mere repetition of stuff you have seen already, he´s not only going through the motions. If the guy wouldn´t need to sit (bass and snare drum duties, remember) you could call a big part of his show stand-up comedy. He can go with the flow and reacts easily to the crowd or given situations. When I saw him one time in Köln, his guitar wouldn´t work. He made up a hilarious story around it that kept you so busy laughing your ass off! You just didn´t realize the little break, in which he got another guitar and then continued as if nothing had happened, almost as if it was part of the show. Last night though might have even been the best DE gig I´ve seen so far. The guy was almost sparkling when he started to take care of business.

Hit came after hit and not unlike BLACK MAGIC SIX he produced a wall of sound, just with even less means! It was one of the rare gigs that I didn´t want to end but the inevitable happened after almost an hour of killer r´n´r songs straight from the garage grave and a lot of fun. Unfortunately we had to leave right after the show, I would have liked to have a short chat again and tell him how cool it is to have him here in Finland. That by the way is something not all bands and artists necessarily do. Norway? Check. Sweden? Check. Denmark? Check. Finland? Hhmmm...difficult. Not so DEAD ELVIS. He has performed also in Turkey, Russia, China, Brazil and is due for a Japan tour in 2012. So if the dead man comes to a town near you, I urge you to go see him - There´s no way you will regret it!

The man himself and yours truly

Dead Elvis leaves the building.

MAKE SURE TO CHECK OUT:


Dead Elvis & his one man grave

Hola Ghost

Black Magic Six

Karoshi Lovers

Bar Loose
(choose English if needed)                    

News flash

Howdy partners!
Again it´s been a little while since something happened here on the blog so it is high time to break both the silence and the news:

First of all, I received my invitation to the new language course already last Thursday. It starts on the 14 of February, so exactly one month after my Finnish test in January. This one is gonna put the dot on the i of "intensive" cause it´s five days a week and at least six hours per day.
This means war, mate! Well, bring it on, the odds are that I will either speak Finnish fluently after some weeks or turn into a vegetable, I will have to find out the hard way.

Then we had my girlfirend´s cousin visiting us for the weekend which was lots of fun. Hanging out, eating out, rocking out was our agenda. After a nice dinner on Friday in a Mexican restaurant we went to Juttutupa on Saturday to see rock ´n´ roll veterans Whistle Bait. It was our first visit to this venue which is actually a restaurant / bar that looks like a real castle. The cool thing is that they have bands play there at weekends and the entrance is free!

The place was pretty packed and we had to cue for a little while but it was worth the wait. Whistle Bait did mostly covers but with a very positive vibe and without the incredibly generic and boring exercised moves that you usually see in most R ´n´ R performances. They didn´t need that anyway, the music was good enough. Definetely more Sixties than Fifties they came across like a Wanderers soundtrack and I mean that in the most positive way. Spiced up with piano (well, the dreadful keyboard) and saxophone they were the full package. Especially their saxophone player was cool. He played great and even looked as if he would have just come from a movie set.

Whistle Bait just celebrated their 25 anniversary!

Mr. Cool at work

After the show we stayed for a couple of drinks and then went to one of the smallest bars I know in Kallio. It´s on kolmas linja and the damn name escapes me each and everytime I´ve been there. How come, I wonder? Well, it´s really funny over there cause they have an old juke box. Although there´s an out-of-order sign it can still be used, so for a couple of bucks you can listen to Finnish Iskelmä, German Schlager, 50ties R´n´R, the Beatles...it´s like made for me!

Ra, Ra, Rasputin, lover of the Russian Finnish Queen

As you can see in the picture above, shaving hasn´t been an issue for me lately. I promised myself that I will grow my beard until I have a new guitar. And what can I say? Der Bart ist ab! Last Sunday my razor machine had some work to do cause I got lucky! After a long search I found my desired guitar on German Ebay. For the ones who didn´t know, there is NO Ebay in Finland. We have an equivalent here called Huuto but it can´t really compete. It´s quite hard to find anything there I´m interested in, e.g. vinyl records. Muusikoiden.net is the place to search everything music related, be it musicians (that´s what I´m currently doing), gigs or instruments. That page is a very useful tool, needless to say that I searched it daily for that particular guitar but it never popped up. Now, since I bought it finally in Germany, I still gotta wait some time until I finally have the axe in my hands. When the moment comes I´ll let you know, but älä nuolaise ennen kuin tipahtaa!

Make sure to check out:

Whistle Bait
Juttutupa

In-A-Gaga-Da-Vida

Well, eeh...oops! What was that?! Seems like I wound up working as stagehands for Lady Gaga last Thursday night at Hartwall Arena. We were quite a big bunch of local roadies but were all allowed to watch almost the entire show for free. I wouldn´t have paid for it but free of charge? Come on...of course I checked it out! It was real fun to see us bearded mid-thirty guys with Motörhead shirts, Misfits caps and Entombed patches among all these überstyled teens and twens. By now I maybe don´t have to explain anymore that this kind of music ain´t my cup of tea but I never disliked her stuff too much either. Plus I think there is something about her. In a way she´s a modern Madonna, talent combined with lots of shock-value and all. The show was BIG and explained the huge number of my collegues. Let´s see...we had a full band, five backround singers, twenty dancers, podiums, staircases and a glowing cube on stage, a giant monster fish, a catwalk into the audience, lots of neon signs, video projections, all kinds of props, a subway car replica, a real Mad Max style car and plenty of gay pride with sexual undertones (or overtones?). Ah yes, and she changed her outfit at least five times. I don´t know if you need all this but with todays kids, maybe you do. Just four musicians on stage? Boring. No glitz, no glamour? Zap to another channel. This was a video game and Lady Gaga pushed the buttons on her adoring crowd. Did a lot of propagaganda, too. She thanked her fans to an almost unbearable extent (at one point I saw her enormous face on one of the screens and wondered if I really saw tears in her eyes), she encouraged them to be proud of themselves, no matter from where they are or what they are or bla bla bla and talked a lot of unity talk. Pathetic, yes but hey! Message and attitude were thin, perhaps even calculated but alright! Rather that than some ungrateful fuck on stage who doesn´t communicate at all with the fans. Very few get away with that.

The Gagamobile leaves Hartwall Arena. 

What did the trick for me was seeing her perform a song alone, just playing piano and singing a slow ballad. Again lots of talking in between (she ridiculed and definetely eliminated rumors she would lip-sync) but that was the part of this whole extravaganza where she showed that she is a really good and talented musician. It was also the calmest part that proved she doesn´t need the circus around her to appear good. But to avoid confusing the teenagers who need explosions and five different things happening simultaneously to feed their ADHD they at least set her piano on fire. What a laugh...

CONCLUSIO: I am not a fan now but I am convinced that Lady Gaga is one of the good people. Whoever is a fan of her and/or her music has my blessing. Not that I think anybody would care...

POST SCRIPTUM: We packed and dragged her shit into the trucks until 4am.

Revelations 11:10:10

And I looked and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was the Killing Joke, and hell followed with him. I´m still in awe of their great performance on Monday, it was truly breath-taking! The band celebrates the 30th anniversary of their first album released in 1980, they are back in original line up with a new record and they convinced (I swear) everyone at Nosturi that night that they are still a force to be reckoned with. But let me start from the beginning.

I had never been in Nosturi until then but walking by that impressive crane (=nosturi) a couple of times before I always thought about how well the whole scenery fits a Killing Joke show. You get in the right techno-fearing, tribal man vs. machine mood already outside of the venue, just perfect. Nosturi has two floors, a restaurant on ground floor and they have all kinds of happenings going on there. Concerts from mainstream to extreme, art exhibitions, theatre plays, you name it. They also provide 40 (!) rehearsal spaces in the basement. I was told the building is even set up with a retractable roof, so if an event demands and the weather conditions allow it, they open that roof like a tuna can and you will literally see stars during a show or party! That wasn´t the case now but trust me, you don´t want that to happen in a Finnish autumn night. And it´s definetely getting colder now...

Zakk Wylde´s little brother? I don´t think so.

From inside Nosturi turned out to be a real cool place, too. We went up to the second floor where the show was about to start at 20.15. There is a club that is small enough to create atmosphere and intimacy, but still big enough to hold a good crowd. When support act Kotiteollisuus hit the stage at 20.15 sharp (sharp!) the place wasn´t too filled with people yet. Given the fact that the show was sold out some of those missing people must have had better things to do than watch the biggest selling rock act in Suomi play. And I bet there were better things to do. Their set of 30 minutes felt like an eternity and the music was utterly and mind-numbingly boring. They focused on their harder material only as if they had something to prove. Desperately trying to come across like bad-ass rockers the band had one big problem and it was a crucial one: No ideas to speak of. Their set was like one long song and that song just wasn´t good. Ei kiitos.

Then Killing Joke finally made it up to us for the long wait. I´m not only talking about the 45 minutes it took them to come on stage after Kotiteollisuus, which I thought was a bit nerving. KJ were supposed to play here already on April 29th, I would have seen them in Germany even before that, namely on the 23rd of April. But the whole tour was postponed due to timing problems with the release of their new album Absolute Dissent, and this meant waiting for half a year! KJ didn´t want to tour without the record being released and their show pretty much answered the question why. That brings me directly to the "downside" of their gig, so let´s get it over with because the rest is gonna be praising!

I already guessed this would happen. What songs is a band going to play that has put out 13 incredible albums but ALL members of the current line-up have only recorded two of them together, the first and the latest that is. Exactly! They played six songs from their debut and nine new ones, eight of the latter in a row! I didn´t mind the old stuff, on the contrary I enjoyed it very much. Maybe I shouldn´t whine about the many new songs, they are damn good, but I only knew three of them. My obsessive-compulsive disorder is to blame that I only buy vinyl records and Absolute Dissent is still not out on LP. I was hoping to purchase the wax at the merchandise stand only to find no records at all, which was quite a bummer. So for one part of the show I was rather listening than raising my fist and yelling to my fave tunes. And why they didn´t play Endgame, the teaser (and goddamn hit) for tour and album, will always remain a riddle to me.

BUT: They still were so fucking great, you just can´t argue with class! The quar... eeh, quintet (with keyborder Reza Uhdin) was on a great mood and you felt instantly that they had a really good time themselves, something I regard as very important. Who wants to watch bored musicians on stage? Thought so...

Jaz Coleman. Pure energy.

Coleman is maybe not for everybody´s taste with his theatrical performance, starring eyes and gestures soaking with symbolism (?) but there is no way the man leaves you cold. He has an incredible stage presence and he can sing like an angel and scream like the devil. Jaz Coleman is one of my fave singers, hands-down. The typical conspiracy-theory preaching part between songs was maybe a bit much, but...hey, I was done complaining. Kevin "Geordie" Walker is one of the most underrated guitarists in rock history. That guy is a one man orchestra, an army of one. No pretentious solo wankery but riffs to mesmerize and memorize. Absolutely no-one sounds like him. He was standing there, grooving a bit (not too much) to the music, puffing away cigarettes (an offence any other musician except Lemmy would get lynched for in Finland) and churned out riffs with ease any other string-bender would sell his or her soul for. What a cool motherfucker! You see why he´s one of my fave guitar players? The lost sons Youth (getting bald, hehe) and Big Paul Ferguson were great, too. Youth quite obviously enjoyed himself and was moving constantly all over the stage. Big Paul still has the beat and it was great to see him perform Love like blood,  the band´s biggest commercial success that is so far from sounding commercial that it´s pure joy! When they played The Wait and Pandemoneum at the end of their regular set all hell broke loose! KJ said their thank yous to a first patient and then very grateful crowd with three encores and I bet they would have played even more if there wouldn´t have been a deadline. It was truly a show to remember and I´m glad I was there! Amen.

Killing Joke killing Nosturi

Make sure to check out:

www.killingjoke.com (again!)
www.kotiteollisuus.com (to make up your own mind)
www.elmu.fi (Nosturis homepage, choose your language)

Batman

Bar Batman. A piece of art.

Or in Finnish: Lepakkomies. So if you read this, Bruce Wayne, now you know. But the batman over here has nothing to do with a mysterious millionaire chasing villains, although it might be villains you have to encounter there. Just kidding, Lepakkomies is a bar in Helsinki´s infamous destrict Kallio, on Helsinginkatu to be exact and a stone throw away from my flat. It doesn´t only bait you with very acceptable beer prices (the Kallio area is pretty cheap compared to the rest of Helsinki, if not whole Finland) but has also bands play on a regular basis. That´s what brought me there last night, cause as posted before, Lovecoat, Bananas and Velvert were on the bill. I went there almost in a hurry not to miss the first band, only to realize that I (blockhead) had forgotten my camera at home. Translates to: I´m unfortunately not able to present any live pictures, damn it. At Lepakkomies you will find the bands play in the basement, a cosy oblong room with a bar holding what I would estimate up to 100 people. Well, yesterday approximately 10 showed up, maybe 15. I felt sorry for the bands who seemed to lose a potential audience to some other event in Bar Loose which took place simultaneously. These things happen, been there, done that.

Lovecoat didn´t lose their cool either and went on stage first. Stoner Rock was the name of the game and I was glad to notice that the trios´ approach to the genre was not the typical generic formula type of thing but rather of a more unique nature. They were a little sloppy from time to time but I think that some of their songs were real hits. Good riffs and good hooklines, that´s what it takes! My personal favorite of their show was without doubt the tune Radio, you will find it on the fellas myspace page (links below as usual).

Lovecoat in their rehearsal room. Drummer Otto and me just recently had a nice jam session there.

Next up were Bananas, and well, that´s what they were. Nomen est omen and they were anxious to prove it. They were three guys and a girl on "vocals". I was told that one of the male members used to play in Fun, another (still very much active) Finnish band who recorded with Steve Albini. Impressive despite the fact that I think that Steve Albini is...well, not my cup of tea. That seems to be the connection to Bananas because they didn´t hit it off with me. Hysterical screaming followed by incoherent mumbling over songs that sometimes made me miss some kind of structure. Sudden tempo and time changes dominated the music. They had some good ideas, though. Maybe just too many in one song. Or maybe my simple mind starts to show here, I know a few of my friends will be silently nodding their heads to their screens reading this. There definetely are fans of that kind of music so I would have listed Bananas´ URL anyways, but I did not find them on the net. Otto from Lovecoat told me that they like to change their name every now and then, wonder why...

I missed out Velvert because I felt tired and had an early wake up today. Only too bad, looks like they would have been more on the poppy side with some nice songs, a funny contrast to the other two groups. Nice when the bands do not sound exactly the same during one night.

Velvert performing at some place I haven´t seen them either.

My schedule for today included some struggles with the authorities and I had this one tune ringing in my mind all of the time. Some of you will know the feeling. It´s when a song gets stripped entirely off its lyrical context or meaning and becomes a soundtrack for a situation you´re in or a feeling you have.
So here is my

SONG FOR THE DAY:

Bad Brains - Secret 77

and here´s why:

www.nordsoc.org/fi/Suomi/Suomen-sosiaaliturva

Make sure to check out:

www.lepakkomies.fi
www.myspace.com/lovecoat
www.myspace.com/velvert

ADDENDUM October 9, 2010:
I just got word that Bananas do have a myspace page, thanks Rasmus!

www.myspace.com/atktietokone