Tuska Open Air Metal Festival 2002
Helsinki, Finland: 12th - 14th of July 2002
Review & Photos By The Finnish Metal Rules Team
Day 2: SATURDAY, July 13th
The second day of the festival was kicked off by a Stoner Rock
oriented combo called Sunride, having a few Nicke Anderssons look-alike
dudes basically jumping around on the stage and enjoying playing there
at fullest.
Impaled Nazarene
But a real wake-up kick to the ass was given by the controversial
´Nuclear metallers´ Impaled Nazarene whose set around at 3.00 noon was
definitely a mind-blowing overwhelming experience of an uncompromising
Hardcore-metal delivered with an immense ultra-hyper speed for which no
normal, every-day-dude should be capable of bringing out of him/her-self
in the ´normal´ festival circumstances. And of course the band´s
Grand-Goat Mika´s relentless and hateful stage performance was worth
watching, too as it always has been thus far.
The Crown
Next up, it was the time to witness the relentless Swedish Thrash
patrol, The Crown, who had hired their old vocalist Johan Lindstrand to
replace the former At The Gates shouter Tomas Lindberg who parted ways
with the band quite surprisingly due to ´personal differences´.
Despite that minor, but unfortunate, incident the band seemed to be in a
really deadly shape on the stage, basically concentrating on playing
songs off their impressive new album CROWNED IN TERROR. Their previous
albums weren´t ignored completely either. The band played almost an
hour and I honestly have to admit that at one point it all sounded to me
like they repeated only one of their songs over and over again as their
blasting full-out, all-deafen blitzkrieg-ish Thrash attack simply made
you numb and breathless so to speak. This probably may have caused that
tiny cold fact, ImpNaz were rather ruthless on the same killing field
just a while ago, giving us all Hell and just much more.
Nevertheless, it was great to see them playing at Tuska 2002 ´coz
the band´s highly energetic ´Thrashexplosion´ surely didn´t let any
devoted, die-hard maniacs of the band down by any means. However, the
guys definitely need to be credited with causing a few of hurting necks
afterwards. Amen to the hurting neck muscles and let´s raise a fair
toast for the whole band for coming over to Tuska 2002 at such a short
notice.
Sentenced
Weird and even unexpected technical problems haunted another Northern
metal combo - namely Sentenced - forcing them to change the set list
quite radically because of the opening intro didn't start working
properly as it had been hoped for. When the fucked-up intro and other
problems were occurring throughout the whole set, the band instead had
to focus on the well-known battle hymns as "Warrior Of Life",
"Nepenthe", "The Suicider", "Drown
Together", "Nepenthe", "Bleed", "The Sun
Won't Shine" - and just ignoring "Killing Me Killing You"
in the wake of the whole CRIMSON album. The Sentenced dudes have created
quite a depressive impression out of themselves which in a way reflected
into their stage performance by not communicating with their audience
that much at all - the guys basically concentrating on standing a little
bit on the background during their whole set. Probably our nice´n´hot
summer weather has lots of to do with that tiny fact, though.
Ajattara
Before ´the beauty and the beasts´ were unleashed on the main
stage, a domestic so-called ´all-star´ Black - or whatever Pagan Metal
combo Ajattara consisting a few guys from Amorphis, did a real vicious
sounding gig in a smaller stage. The band's main man better known as the
Amorphis vocalist definitely has a wide range of voice skills to handle
songs from melodic tunes to an extreme grim Black Metal stuff. Luckily
Ajattara ain´t your stereotypical Black Metal outfit with some twice
circulated 2nd - or 3rd class chainsaw riffs, chaotically rushing drum
parts with no starts nor stops, satanic wannabe wankering, etc… .Their
music is more like a tight marriage between doomy and heavy riffs melted
together with some influences from Black Metal. Lyrically there´s no
Black Metal band that even could match with them equally. Pasi´s
lyrical approach in Ajattara knows no boundaries, so many consider him
as some sort of a genius in that particular department as well.
Nightwish
The second day got its prestigious conclusion when Nightwish hit the
stage as the headlining band on Saturday. Obviously most of male
metalheads must have got their tiny erections while watching the
beautiful front woman moving on the stage and having dressed up in a
damn sexy and desirable way. Nightwish was, for an obvious enough
reason, concentrating on playing songs off their extremely successful
new album CENTURY CHILD and putting Marco Hietala, the incredible male
vocalist of the Nightwish´s current line-up, for an ultimate test for
his 1st time in a live situation to share vocals with the always
cute-looking Tarja on that particular department. "Bless the
Child" started their set - and off CENTURY CHILD the crowd was
blessed by such songs as "End of All Hope", "Dead to the
World", a hit single "Ever Dream", "Slaying the
Dreamer" and "Beauty of the Beast". Despite some
technical difficulties during their set, both singers sounded just
great, but I also have to say Marco´s input for being one of the two
vocalists on the Nightwish camp, has really brought more power into the
band´s live appearance. Besides being an extremely talented and strong
vocalist, he´s also a great showman and knows how to be entertaining
onstage; thanks to all the spent years in his previous band Tarot as a
brilliant front man.
From Nightwish´s earlier albums, the band played, if I still
remember correctly, "Come Cover Me", "Sacrament of
Wilderness", "The Kinslayer", "Sleeping Sun"
and an evergreen Gary Moore hit song "Over the Hills and Far
Away" was naturally a part of their set at that night. Probably due
to their rather short set, they didn´t play any songs from ANGELS FALL
FIRST which was a bit disappointment for me personally. "Elvenpath"
and "Beauty and the Beast" could have been nice additions to
the set list, but nonetheless, I bet most of the people who came to see
them, were satisfied enough with a selection of the songs they had
chosen to be played at Tuska 2002.
Burning Point
And then it was again time to crawl yet another time to the Tuska´s
metal club to check out a few rising and promising new bands but having
old and known faces in the rank. The first old-new one Burning Point
kicked off by bringing the old school heavy metal off from their debut
album Salvation Of Fire
by doing almost 90% of the whole output material. The stuff as well as
the band got overwhelming response from the tired, well drunk audience.
Thunderstone
Another interesting new combo with familiar faces in the rank was
Thunderstone whose self titled album has got praising reviews
everywhere. It isn't a big surprise as all the members have been
involved in the metal genre for app. 15 years or even more, so all the
skills and talents should be under control. When Burning Point operates
in the traditional metal genre, whereas Thunderstone's direction is more
into the progressive with some power elements tied up.
It was kinda unbelievable to see all the reaction that Thunderstone
received even though it was already 2AM(!) and the people had spent the
whole sunny, hot and metallic day in the festival area.
Read
on for Day 3...