Lavonardo

• Top 3: Megadeth, Overkill, Kamelot.
• Not worth seeing: Nah, everything was worth a look.
• T-shirt pricing: Not too bad, mostly around 20€.
• Friends sighted/encountered/avoided: Less than ten.
• Passed-out attendees: Surprisingly few, considering the temperature.
• Time spent in the official beer-drinking area: None (backpack’s a bitch to smuggle in).
• Imaginative outfits: None, really.
• Money spent on: One shirt, four records.
• Amount of dust: Considerable.
• Top “I bet that’s going to cause regrets in the morning” sight: A guy whose bald head bore the text GAMBINA done with a wide black permanent marker.

To cap the festival, it was announced that on account of impending renovations in the Kaisaniemi park, Tuska will move to Suvilahti (where hipsters’ own Flow already takes place) next year. Not too big a deal I guess, at least the area is rather conveniently reached with the metro. The grounds were rather full this year, no idea how much room for expansion is in the new location.

Another day, another late arrival.

Planned to see Megadeth, everything else was icing on the cake.

And the icing was pretty thin this time around.

I’ve never been a fan of Cannibal Corpse, and the half an hour I saw the band today did not change matters. Uninteresting death metal with growly vocals just failed to appeal at all.

The penultimate slot was again split between two stages. Nile had a way bigger crowd. Big enough to deter from having a good spot to check them out. Acoustics from way down the side were sub-optimal and hence I refuse to give any verdict on them. [Amatory] on the other stage played decent nu-metal.

Megadeth was the main event for a lot of attendees based on the numbers in front of the main stage. They played some eighty minutes, and sadly did not cover the entire length of the classic Rust in Peace album that turns 20 years this summer.

The set list:

Wake up dead
In my darkest hour
Headcrusher
Skin o' my teeth
Holy wars
Hangar 18
Five magics
Poison was the cure
Tornado of souls
Dawn patrol
Trust
Angry again
A tout le monde
Sweating bullets
Symphony of destruction
Peace sells

Not as earth-shattering an experience as the previous sighting in Tampere three years ago, but a decent gig nonetheless.

The modus operandi of the second day followed the first, go in late and bail out before the last band finishes.

Devin Townsend Project‘s output seemed far more likable than Ziltoid the previous evening. Groovy, well-played and variable. Definitely worth a second look.

Survivors Zero played quite accessible death/thrash, with a Kreator-cover as the only recognizable element of their offering. Good enough to inspire me to pick up their single.

Kamelot‘s melodic power metal was accompanied by the heaviest pyro seen so far. The relentless display of burning kerosene probably was quite hard on the black-clad musicians on stage. Quite impressive, and worth a second look as well.

Overkill is a late eighties band that never made it big. And the guys have stayed angry and energetic ever since. All songs sounded mean and tightly wound. And that’s a compliment. Recognized a few of the old songs (Wrecking Crew, Rotten to the Core), and was very impressed by the energy and range put on Bobby Ellsworth – after all this is the third decade he’s been screaming his guts out.

Traded Overkill for Bloodbath around the halfway point of the gig. Mikael Åkerfeldt’s project played a few songs amidst long and rambling on-stage chats. Decent, but nothing really to get excited about – and yet another confirmation that death metal is not my cup of tea at all.

Nevermore replaced Mastodon as the headliner on Saturday. Warrel Dane wasn’t in the best form – sunshine in his eyes seemed rather distracting. Like so many other progressive metal bands, Nevermore just felt better off a record. Not on account of any desire to hear polished products.

Bought four records, no shirts, and nothing to eat or drink.

Tomorrow’s the time for Megadeth.

Spent Friday evening in Tuska, the annual metal festival conveniently arranged in downtown Helsinki.

Walked in as two of the bands I wanted to see had been given concurrent timeslots. Swallow the Sun‘s melodic doom gathered fewer listeners than Pain‘s industrially overtoned metal. Both seemed to be in fine form, but neither was in their optimal environment. So, with fifteen minutes of each down, ambled down to the shirt vendors to check out the offerings.

Heard Satyricon from afar. Picnic trumped black metal. Mozzarella and reindeer were more interesting than corpsepainted norwegians. The music was not nearly as opposed to my tastes than I thought. Not the top albums on the “to get”-list, but not something to actively avoid either.

Ihsahn was the most unfamiliar element on stage, and didn’t really get a good dose, since walked off to the Inferno-stage to see Obituary, an old-school death metal band I first heard in the late nineties. Wasn’t truly impressed back then, and neither today.

The top billing of the day was Ziltoid the Omniscient, a stage production of Devin Townsend’s 2007 album. The concert was accompanied by video, too bad the only screen was diagonally opposite and mostly hidden by the mixing booth. Then again, the puppet show wasn’t too interesting anyway.

Bailed during the second half of the ZtO show, as the cat of the house demands food and petting before bedtime.