The Seven Year Itch

SONGS FOR THE DAY:

Danzig - 777
Danny - Seitsemän kertaa seitsemän
Nina & Mike - Was wird sein in sieben Jahren
Roger Whittaker - Sieben Jahre, Sieben Meere

Days of danger

Spotted and photographed by Ardo

During this winter the area around Helsinki had the most snowfall in Finland and it´s piling up all over town. Snow mountains in every corner and surreal white fields on deserted and buried construction sites. Beautiful to look at and hardly dangerous when on ground level, that white stuff proved to be lethal coming from roof tops. A thing I dreaded might happen already for some time. Yesterday an old man got hit on his head by falling snow and ice in Hakaniemi, Helsinki. That poor oldtimer died right there. Pictures are not related to the accident but they shall illustrate the pure force of nature that is lurking above us at the moment.

If that´s your car be happy it´s not your head.

A statutory provision enforced only a couple of years ago says that the snow has to be removed from the roofs on a regular basis. If the house is owned by the town it´s the city who takes care of it. When the buildung has a private owner he or she has to contract a company. And although these companies are currently popping up like mushrooms on fertile ground it doesn´t seem possible to prevent an accident like this. Temperatures have risen to slightly over zero lately, everything is melting. There is plenty to melt and that makes it so dangerous. In these days of danger you´re well-advised to have one eye on the street and one on the sky.

SONG FOR THE DAY:

Jello Biafra & NoMeansNo - The Sky Is Falling And I Want My Mommy

My cucumber hurts

The year is still very young and yet there´s already something to wave my fist at. I´m invited to an official language test on the 14th of January! Don´t know what happens after that, might be that they put me into a different Finnish course depending on how good or bad I´m doing. Language-wise I´m in a state of confusion at the moment. There´s already quite much vocabulary and grammar buzzing through my synapses but the more I know the more confused I get. Sometimes I wonder who will win this fight, me or the language. To quote the once popular and nowadays pathetic ex-ski jumper Matti Nykänen: "The chances are fifty-sixty!"

I have developed a theory over the last few months. It says that whoever invented Finnish got completely burned out while thinking up the grammar part of the language, so this nutty professor was too exhausted to proceed in the same frantic way with the vocabulary. Beaten and breathless he gasped out the words that made it to the dictionary. But tired as he was he got sloppy, so there is a long list of words that have more than one meaning. The semantics however can be entirely and utterly different from each other. Confusing, very confusing! I´m aware of the fact that Finnish is not the only language in which this phenomenon occurs but it seems to me that the latter tends to be exceptionally weird (not only) in this sense.

Just a few examples for the many sources of misunderstanding:
Last month you read "joulukuusi" almost everywhere and I wondered what the heck this "christmas six" (kuusi=six) might be all about.
Maybe the Finns refer to the three magi but being full of good old glühwein they see them double? 3x2=6? Or you need three christmas sixes to celebrate a satanic christmas? Black Xmas 666? Nah, none of the above, it just means christmas tree, goddamnit! And isn´t it obvious? No, it´s not. The word for tree is actually puu but nobody will ever buy, sell or steal a joulupuu in Finland (except me, maybe).

Here´s another thing fitting quite well to the season, cough cough...
If someone tells you: "Minulla on kurkku kipeä" it doesn´t mean that this persons cucumber hurts, although the translation is correct on a word to word basis. But in order to give this sentence a bit more sense I strongly suggest to use the second meaning of the word kurkku which translates to "throat". Aha!
It might pass as poetic and inspiring that kieli means both "language" and (guitar) "string", as a musician I like to think that music is the language that unites the world. But naida? Give me a break already! It means "to marry" and "to fuck"! No sex before marriage according to Finnish vocabulary?
Ei jumalauta...It´s getting weirder all of the time and there is no end to it, the list is streching and so are my nerves.

Wish me luck for my test on the 14th!

Five finger feedback

To chase out the last ghosts of 2010 and then focus on the present instead of the past I want to give you my personal poll for the previous year.
Just to get it out of my head. You see best what´s directly in front of our eyes so I gave my poor old brain some demonic mnemonic and remembered 2010 with the five fingers of my hand. This may sound confusing now but I bet you will get the picture pretty quickly. And no, my lips don´t move when I read...

THUMB:

Up
Everything Bombodrom
Historic summer                        
Hello Finland
Expanding horizons
Strong bonds

Down
All the goodbyes
The rat race
R.I.P. Ronnie James Dio, Peter Steele...the gods are dying



INDEX FINGER:

I have listened to this one till my years bled and I still can´t get enough of it!
SMOKE BLOW maintain a high quality level on almost all their albums but The Record is a perfect mixture of what´s great in hardcore, metal and even some light cream topping of black metal without the bullshit. Schleswig-Holstein HC rules!

Broken Bonds of Friendship
Summer of Betrayal 

If you follow this blog regularly, then you might have expected this: KILLING JOKE´s Absolute Dissent is an amazing album and was worth the wait in ´10! They manage to offer a wide range of styles from harsh metal riffs via Europop to dub/reggae without losing track. The band reinvents itself while remaining true to their signature sound in their 30tieth year of existence. He who laughs last didn´t get the joke!

Endgame
European Superstate

BLESSURE GRAVE didn´t survive 2010 and I almost only witnessed the supernova of this troubled goth outfits´ demise. Hated by some, loved by many they had a crush on Joy Division, Death in June and all things Darkpop from the 80ties. Nothing new, but very charming. This 7" In The First Place shall be just an example for their entire opus. The link leads you to the song and a review of their LP Judged by 12, carried by 6 by Dusted Magazine. I agree with the author that it´s a strong but not their best release. BG mastermind T. Graves fronts now both Soft Kill and Group Hex. Look out!

Keith Morris is back with a bang! 55 years and he still sounds pissed off as in 1978 with Black Flag and then the Circle Jerks. While the first went on with other singers before their passing (even Garfield was on the mic), the latter was on a trip into oblivion for the last 15 years. Forget about all that ´cause the aptly titled First Four EPs 7" box set by Morris´ new band OFF! is a time warp into the cradle of American Hardcore before things got ugly. 1 - 2, fuck you!

Black Thoughts
I Don´t Belong

After a demo the DEADMEN released this bulldozer of a 7", then went on a (maybe eternal) hiatus due to a member moving away (reminds me a bit of my own musical path). It´s really a downer because this stuff really kills! Possession Of The Void combines Celtic Frost ferocity with Motörhead rawness and D-beat attitude. Had a short but really nice Email contact with axeman Carl, who informed me that the rest of the band plans something new and that he also plays in Coffinworm. The Deadmen were so kind to put all the ripping tracks from their 45 on their blog. Highly recommended!




MIDDLE FINGER:

NEON FORMLICHT, Düsseldorf
Partitiivi singular and plural, Finland
Fucked up red tape everywhere



RING FINGER:

Nils & Silke



PINKY:

Olli Herman (urgh!)


That was my five finger feedback for 2010.
Now I can clench my fist and show it to 2011.

1.1.11

Not too many words today. Most of us will feel the tight, icy grip of krapula. That´s not a well-behaved, seductive and aristocratic vampire, that´s the Finnish word for hangover. So we made our New Year´s resolutions and all that crap but while we are still licking our wounds and just talk about becoming better persons in 2011, our man Joke in this little video takes immediate action! Enjoy this:



HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!