Tuska Open Air Metal Festival 2002
Helsinki, Finland: 12th - 14th of July 2002
Review & Photos By The Finnish Metal Rules Team
Day 1: FRIDAY, July 12th
The doors were already opened at 3.00 pm when the Swedish
Mustasch got on the stage, followed by a couple of domestic bands´
sets, Blake and Sub-Urban Tribe. A couple of words could be mentioned
about Sub-Urban Tribe. The band has been around for about 6-7 years now,
mostly being on hiatus because of other bands resurrected from the dead.
For example the Sut's bassist's old speed/metal Stone that used to have
a die-hard following in the late 80's in Finland. But when watching
Sub-Urban Tribe's current state, the combo has received an entire new
kick to their collective asses because the former Kyyria vocalist has
joined to the band about a year ago. He has given a new vital fuel to
their soft mainstream radio friendly approach. But when seeing the
band's to-do and listening to their stuff from an old-school thrasher´s
view, one thing can be said: "Do NOT bring Stone back anymore…!!"
Marduk
Then
it was about time to have a rude and merciless lesson of the panzer
division attack when Marduk rolled onto the stage like a colony of tanks
from World War II, providing the most aggressive performance of the
whole festival. The Swedish black war maniacs stormed with a menace by
churning out the most destructive set of their most punishing and
merciless tunes like "The Funeral Bitch" and the Marduk
classic "Of Hell's Fire." The new recruited drummer needs to
get an extra mention for the thunderous drumming throughout the set
without showing signs of exhaustion. An overdose of too much sun
probably kept his blood circulation to the very maximum causing his
extraordinary impressive work behind the drum kit - we will just never
know that for sure. Oh yeah, Legion's karate jumps and kicks´ were
extremely hilarious to watch, too…
Moonsorrow
Both Moonsorrow and Ensiferum have something in common between two of
them because of both the bands explore their musical genius and
creativity basically on the same playground of their somewhat strange
world full of trolls, Vikings and ´other weirdos´ and also happen to
be bilingual what comes to a communicating language. The type of Folk
-inspired Viking Black Metal definitely appeals to the ´trollish´
Black Metal fans for sure and having a few of glances over their crowds,
you can become certain that it definitely did. Especially Moonsorrow´s
set at Tuska was VERY MUCH worth seeing because the whole band not only
sounds great live, but also looks somewhat good visually are
entertaining to watch. Heh…, the guys even paid some tribute to
Manowar by playing one of their earliest songs off BATTLE HYMN album to
their fans. So let´s all raise our swords high for the old muscle Kings…
Hail Manowar!!!
Machine Head
The
last act of the first day was Machine Head who had definitely succeeded
in divining the whole wide metal community to two different camps: one
half just either hated them and the rest of us seemed to like them
pretty much as a matter of speaking. The line-up of the band was
undoubtedly more than interesting for many of us several old-school
thrashers as the axeman of both Technocracy and the legendary Bay Area
thrashers Vio-lence Phil Demmel had been hired to help the Machine Head
dudes out for a short European festival tour. As for the gig it gotta be
admitted that The Bay Area ´sweat suit metallers´ unleashed one hell
of a gig despite the latest two efforts haven't got the Metal-Rules team
and some other ol´-school metalheads convinced about their more ´Yo-Yo…Uh!´-
direction. But in spite of that the band proved to be in a damn good
strike and the audience thanked and arranged a real chaotic slamming pit
especially in the very front of the massive stage during the later half
of their show. The band fortunately and for its own sake mostly focused
on the debut album´s material by kicking off through "Old",
"A Thousand Lies", "Davidian" and of course both
"Ten Ton Hammer" and "Leave My Scars" from the
second album were heard as well. As for many of us got surprised,
Machine Head also covered Sepultura's "Territory" and above
all Metallica´s "Creeping Death" and it was received very
well amongst the crazy crowd.
After Machine Head's energy-filled set, the audience, still in some
sort of the tension, starting to throw shitloads of plastic bottles and
other objects directly aimed towards two host commentators of the whole
festival.
2 Ton Predator
After spending a hot day at the venue, it was about time to crawl to
the local metal club to check out a few Swedish bands namely Two Ton
Predator and The Project Hate. Unfortunately Two Ton Predator didn't
appear to be that tempting band onstage. Pretty much on the contrary the
whole combo appeared to be kinda tired and less interested to be on the
stage and obviously were more expecting to have a taste of the king beer
in their thirsty lips.
The Project Hate
As for The Project Hate that is kind of an industrial-tinged Death
Metal project band featuring Kenth Philipson (formerly Leukemia, House
of Usher, etc.) and Jorgen Sandstorm (formerly Grave and currently in
Entombed, too!). The stuff was mixed with the rough riffs and the
programmed drum machine with both Jorgen's utterly brutal vocal delivery
and the female vocalist Mia´s soft and siren-like voice providing a
great contrast to the band´s overall heavy and grotesque-like approach.
The band's attempt to get the people shocked, or at least a bit amused,
got quite hilarious as the guys were covered with sticky blood all over.
Nonetheless, the band sounded very good and did a decent set, pulling
through songs off their two albums. We were also told that the whole
show was recorded to be put out as a live album entitled KILLING
HELLSINKI later this year on Swedish Horns Up Records. Look at for
details at: http://hornsup.whitetrashdevil.com/news.php
Read
on for Day 2...