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

Best trip ever?

At least this was last Saturday´s mantra when Marika, Riku, Susu and yours truly jumped on the ferry to Tallinn. The weather forecast hadn´t been very promising, so we´d made a pact that no cloud, neither literal nor figurative, shall overshadow our little getaway.
This was going to be the best trip ever, period.

In good spirits on the ferry. Best trip ever!

The Estonian capitol on the other side of the pond is a popular destination among the Finns. With only about two and a half hours by boat it´s pretty close and the language is as close to Finnish as it can possibly get. Although most of Tallinn still looks like Sovjet Russia in the 80ties, the city can boast about a beautiful historic downtown that makes you forget its dismal surroundings instantly.

Another thing makes a trip to Tallinn so attractive: compared to Finland the prices over there are ridiculously low, especially for food and drinks. Naturally the "alcohol tourism" is at an all-time high, whole vans that accommodated maybe a pair of knickers and a toothbrush when crossing over to Estonia return brimful with beer & booze, frame sparking on the floor. That wasn´t our agenda, we set out to have a fun weekend, go shopping, eat well and have maybe a beer or two...maybe three.

Best view ever.

When we set foot on Estonian ground it was raining and to spill the beans, it should not stop raining until we where on the ferry back to Helsinki the next day. So what...best trip ever!
Due to the constant drizzle I didn´t take as many pictures as I had planned but here´s a nice view over parts of the old town. On the left you see St. Olaf´s Church, in the distance on the right is the harbor with the big ferries connecting Tallinn with Mariehamn, Stockholm, Rostock, St. Petersburg and of course Helsinki.

All of us had been to Tallinn before so sightseeing didn´t have top priority anyway. While the ladies went on a little shopping spree, Riku and me tried to find a record store called World Clinic. It had popped up on the net a couple of days earlier when I´d been searching for good places to score some vinyl in Tallinn. The shop´s blog looked interesting so I was keen to comb through its shelves. On our arrival at the World Clinic we were somehow reminded how small this world actually can be, and if you, dear reader, recall what the initials "WC" usually stand for, you will also get a good idea of the store size. So what...best trip ever. The shop guy was friendly and apparently active in Tallinn´s underground scene and I think that should always be supported. Riku stepped into the breach and bought a CD. Well done!

On our way to meet the girls we saw the most bizarre vehicle, a weird hybrid between tram and bus that announced itself with rattling chains on the asphalt:

Environment friendly and brings you to wherever is a contact wire. Best bus ever.

The light sign in the window reads "1" but this Trans-Siberian transformer looks rather like a number two. Check out the roof thingies connecting it to the electronic grid. Obviously the chains we heard were grounding this beauty!

Two beds, one tv. Best hotel room ever.

Re-united with the female part of our crew we first quenched our thirst with a couple of brews in a bar before going back to our hotel. We were checked into City Hotel Portas, located directly at the harbor. It´s cheap but clean and peaceful, and that´s all I ask for when staying just for one night (basically a couple of hours). On arrival we had stored our small luggage in the lobby, now it was time to bring our belongings (old and new) to our rooms and take a refreshing shower. Everyone was pretty hungry when we left again for the old town. The plan was to eat out opulently but we had not yet decided where to do so. After scanning the streets for a while we made our choice and it was a good one:
The restaurant Elevant. If you´re ever in Tallinn, go there! Placed nicely on the second floor of an historic house and decorated tastefully, a friendly staff serves you marvellous indian food in a chilled-out atmosphere. So chilled-out in fact, that we were the last customers to leave. Best trip ever, or what?

Hot indian food makes you thirsty, so we tried to find a couple of bars we had heard about. This endeavor proved to be a bit difficult even with that microscopic map of ours. Try to orientate yourself in dark narrow streets and pouring rain. Not an easy task but thus we managed to put more bars to the list than we already had.

Best...oh well.

We had a lot of fun until we called it a very long day around 3am (or 4am? Clock changed to summertime that night). Next morning started with a humble breakfast, then we had to already get packed and check out. On the ferry we all agreed that we had had a splendid time, despite the constant rain, which stopped exactly now to give way to beautiful sunlight. One of our crew members could even update the status of a missing mobile phone from lost to found. Best trip ever indeed!

Make sure to check out:

World Clinic (in Estonian)

Elevant (in English)
City Hotel Portus (in English)
Hell Hunt (in English)
Drink Bar & Grill (in English, stupid name, great bar)
Must Puudel (in Estonian)