KREATOR / SODOM / DESTRUCTION
Hell Comes To Your Town
24.1.2002 Nosturi Helsinki Finland
By The Finnish Metal Rules Team
When
Schmier of Destruction happened to hint to a couple of dudes on their
previous visit in Finland when they were supporting Dimmu Borgir, about
having a chance to get Sodom, Kreator and Destruction to the same bill
and even to Finland, it immediately arose one hell of a desperate
waiting and immense amount of rumors and speculations if they are coming
here or not. And o´ holy mutha fukkin´ cow, on the 24th of January
that happened when the legendary ´big three´ of German´s Thrash
Metal´s carrying forces arrived to Finland with a full metallic attack,
the whole Nosturi club was surprisingly fully packed by the old school
Thrash Metal maniacs, both new - and us ol´ fans naturally, too.
The German band Holy Moses was supposed to be an opening act in the
first leg of the tour, but unfortunately they were forced to pull out of
it due to the recording commitments as according to the official
statement, but the exact reason for their departure was a lack of
financial tour support of their record company. Thanks to the company
for that as a B-class "wanna-be" Cradle Of Filth -clone Wycked
Wytch straight from the sunny Florida had been hired instead to warm up
the crowd for the main 3 bands on the bill that could well be considered
as the European mini version of the concept "Thrash of the
Titans" in my opinion. Watching Wycked Wytch´s performance,
however, one thought crossed my mind somewhat instantly: "Damn what
a crap they brought over here…", to say it honestly. But
obviously they can be ignored entirely now.
Even
though WW´s set sucked donkey´s balls totally, it seemed not to bother
the Finnish audience at all when Destruction hit the stage in the wake
of the opening intro of "Curse The Gods" ´coz as it was
already expected, all hell literally broke on loose in the audience. As
for Destruction, we kinda felt sorry for Schmier as had managed to get a
food poisoning by eating some less unsuitable food in Stockholm.
However, the man battled and raged like a mad butcher throughout the set
with an credible invisible force. He is a real showman who is capable of
driving his audience in the verge of a total chaos and that is only a
positive thing as we were witnessing one of the best European Thrash
Metal act here - and not watching any Doom/Gothic Metal act wading thru
their downright slow-motioned set.
If the food poisoning wasn't already enough, the whole band suffered
from typical technical problems as Mike got his wring broken from his
guitar which took some time to get it fixed and the drummer "had
to" perform the drum solo to fill up the vacant spot. Then the
sounds were occasionally quite awful, as the guitar sound just
disappeared from time to time. All in all, the Destruction combo
thrashed through their set with a style and pride and surely pleased the
major part of their (young) fans for whose this may have been the 1st
time in their life to witness them live here in Finland, I suppose.
Destruction's Setlist
Intro / Curse The Gods
Nailed To The Cross
Invincible Force
Eternal Ban
Let Your Mind Rot
Tears Of Blood
Antichrist / Reject Emotions / Release From Agony
Life Without Sense
Thrash Til' Death
Mad Butcher
The Butcher Strikes Back
Intro / Total Desaster
Bestial Invasion
12
utterly long years have passed by since the first and previous visit of
Sodom to Finland. It happened 1990 in a huge outdoor metal festival
called "Giants Of Rock" along with performances of bands like:
Running Wild, Pretty Maids and Uriah Heep and also a plenty of the
Finnish metal bands. It is obvious the "Hell Comes to Your
Town" tour was an excellent choice and opportunity for the whole
Sodom trio to expand and visit countries where they can hardly do
nowadays. "The German version of Motörhead" kicked the gig
off with the most recent stuff from the typical war oriented material.
But even though the newer material kicks ass and really hard, the most
well known classic tunes of which Sodom is known for, are from the 80's
period, but unfortunately for today Sodom skipped many of the most known
songs off from the set; for instance the following classics were rudely
ignored as: "Nuclear Winter", "Sodomy And Lust",
"Ausgebombt", "Burst Command ´til War", "Nuctemeron"
and "Persecution Mania" - and instead of those ultimate Sodom
classics, the list consisted of a couple of surprise selections; for
example an old demo tune "Witching Metal" (yeah!) and a cover
tune of Motörhead's "Aces Of Spades". But c´mon, even though
Motörhead is one of the most respected and loved dirty sounding rock
bands amongst the metalheads - and even Mr.Angelripper happens to be a
real die hard fan of them, it would, however, has been more
inspirational and uplifting to get more Sodom stuff as their back
catalogue is enviable massive as everyone is supposed to know. Sodom
definitely murdered their old school Thrash/Hardcore-Punk -oriented
crowd when "Blasphemer" cut the air like a laser beam
resulting in the floor was, metaphorically speaking, definitely on fire.
Sodom's setlist
Among Weirdkong
Vice Of Killing
Wachtturn
The Saw Is The Law
Remember The Fallen
Blasphemer
M-16
Outbreak Of Evil
Napalm In The Morning
Witching Metal
Aces Of Spades
Stalinhagel
And
then it was the turn of Kreator to step on the stage and bring the
´extreme aggression´ for the already pleased crowd. Just like with
Sodom the time has been passing pretty quickly as it is almost ten years
now since the Kreator -camp dragged their bones all the way over to
Finland. Even some local polite "wiseguy" from the audience
remembered to thank them for coming over by throwing a package of coffee
for Mille. Of course Mille was flattered by a full package of coffee,
being a big coffee fan as he is.
The lights were turned down when Mille and the rest of his hell
patrol kicked the whole gig off with a brand new material from their new
excellent album "Violent Revolution" and carried on the set by
picking a plenty of well known furious Thrash classics such as
"Pleasure to Kill", "People Of The Lie" and
"Riot Of Violence" which was growled by Mr.Ventor behind his
drum set - just like he´s always doing that song on KREATOR´s gigs. It
wasn't any surprise that the band had selected all in all four tracks
off their highly praised and celebrated "Pleasure To Kill"
album. Those songs sounded as good as I remember them sounding and
naturally all of us were very pleased to hear such evergreen Thrash
tunes from them again. I guess without those particular songs it
wouldn´t be a 100% perfect KREATOR show - and I bet Mille obviously
knows their fans are always expecting to hear some of these songs to be
played.
Right up from the first chords that came out from the speakers, it
was obvious who was the headliner of the day. The sound was no doubt the
best of the day and overall the band´s solid performance and the whole
show were working our really well without any major technical problems.
Their headliner´s status wasn't gained by any uncertainty because the
band's line-up is consisting of a technical Finnish guitarist in the
rank these days who´s capable of churning out some really tasty yet
catchy leads and riffs. Mille told us earlier that they were looking for
a guitarist who could handle the most of the lead stuff as he wasn´t
too keen of playing them any more. Sami Yli-Sirniö (also in WALTARI)
has been in the band for a quite while now and this was his first
performance with Kreator in the front of "home audience".
The audience truly got what they were after for in the first place. A
Teutonic metal onslaught showed us its big powerful muscles again that
have been trained for many - mostly successful years, so in conclusion
it´s rather safe to say - well, even if this is a worn-out cliché to
say: "Long live German Thrash Metal…!!!".
Kreator's Setlist
The Patriarch / Violent Revolution
Reconquering The Throne
Extreme Aggression
People Of The Lie
Phobia
All Of The Same Blood
Awakening
Pleasure To Kill
Renewal
Servant In Heaven
Terrible Certainty
Riot Of Violence
Betrayer
Flag Of Hate / Tormentor
Under The Guillotine
Two of the Finnish Metal Rules Team
with Schmier of Destruction!