Tuska Open Air Metal Festival 2002
Helsinki, Finland: 12th - 14th of July 2002
Review & Photos By The Finnish Metal Rules Team
Day 3: SUNDAY, July 14th
Demigod
Sunday
morning was full of sunshine, a good mood and not that surprisingly at
all, a faint smell of alcohol and vomit all around on my way to the
venue to see the opening act of that day: Demigod. The air temperature
was ready to score a new record for that day, but as an experienced
reporter I somehow knew that the Demigod dudes might have had a few of
cooling-off drinks put aside for me somewhere at the backstage area. And
they had indeed, but all the beers were already gone down their thirsty
throats, so I just enjoyed my soft drinks politely and just pretended to
show my ´happy face´ to the guys, -he! Anyway, when I met the dudes
and was mainly bullshitting with them (also with the ex-members of the
band, Esa Línden and Seppo Taatila respectively!) like half and an hour
before they were supposed to start their ´bashing party´ on the stage,
I was introduced to their new ONLY 17-year-old skinpounder named Tuomo
Latvala who also plays the drums in a downright brutal Death Metal band
called Torngrave. His overall appearance seemed to be a piece of ice and
there was no sign of any tension in him even if he was well aware of his
first real test as a drummer of Demigod. Another fact didn´t ease up
his burden a bit as he obviously knew that Seppo would be watching
amongst the crowd Demigod´s first ever live performance for a very,
very long time - and how he could be capable of filling those rather
big, heavy boots that the ex-drummer Seppo left for him as a real
challenging heritage.
Finally Demigod arrived to the stage - and "As I Behold I
Despise" was kicked off from their lots of underground status
gained SLUMBER OF SULLEN EYES album. The whole stage was full of smoke
and covering these semi-legendary deathrashers pretty damn effectively
under its grey-shaded shroud. Without any lengthened band introductions,
the band dragged "Derailed" and "Gates of
Lamentation" (they did this song after Demigod was split up in
1992-93 and some of the guys formed an old-school evil Thrash orientated
band called Neverborn - Luxi reminds!) out of their latest album and
at this point of the set they already proved to one hell of a live
band!! I was personally amazed by the fact how tight and controlled they
proved to be playing-wise and I bet most of the metalheads who came to
see them to a huge concert tent, pretty much subscribe to my statement
about them according to all those reactions how devotedly and
mercilessly the surprisingly young crowd head banged Demigod´s immortal
tunes.
"Succumb
to Dark" and "My Blood Your Blood" were nailed down next,
followed by "In The Mirrors" and one of my all-time favorite
Demigod tracks, "Silent with Earth" of which live version
sounded immense heavy compared to the album version. As if those
weren´t enough, "Fear Obscures from Within", an old kick-ass
tune from SLUMBER…, blew out from the speakers - just proving the guys
are still able to give a fair enough treatment to their old material.
The new drummer Tuomo made me convinced enough at least in this point
that he was the right guy to take Seppo´s vacant seat - there was just
no question about that. His drumming within "Fear Obscures…"
was simply damn amazing. The double bass drum work was perfect. He was
definitely the right choice to take to the drum kit in Demigod.
The last two songs of their absolutely killer set, "Where the
Shadows Class" and "Towards the Shrouded Infinity" just
put me thinking: "Thank God these guys have come back…".
There´s simply no competition for them in Finland at the moment as far
as their old-school Thrash/Death stuff is concerned.
Sonata Arctica
The Finnish Power Metal assault got its continuation on the main
stage when yet another Northern Power Metal ´let´s-have-some-fun´patrol
Sonata Arctica hit the stage with a brand new tune whose name
unfortunately remains unknown to us. But compared to their rather lame
support gig for Gamma Ray witnessed for about 6 months earlier, their
set at Tuska festival was completely from another planet even though the
vocalist Tony Kakko happened to mess around with his microphone and the
band basically faced some unexpected problems with the sounds and all
that just like some other bands were doing earlier the day. Some of the
most known Sonata Arctica tunes were aired; "Fullmoon",
"Replica", "San Sebastian", "Black Sheep"
on the top of them - and naturally the guys played "Wolf And
Raven" that has become one of the audience´s favorite Sonata
-cuts.
Diablo
The Finnish heavy weight thrashers Diablo conquered the tent by
spitting out an intensive set of aggressively raging tracks from their
brand new 2nd album titled RENASSAINCE. The band's dead-heavy material
drove the packed front area to the ballistic head banging that soon
turned out to be a comfortable slamming pit for many who came to witness
their raw live energy. In all honesty I need to admit that Diablo´s
stage performance possesses such an unchained energy and power that
there´s only a tiny bunch of metal bands here in Finland that are able
to reach the same level as far all the intensity and power are
concerned. I´m just hoping that they could do a tour or two outside of
Finland to convince other fans of extreme metal as well ´coz they seem
to be a rather unknown metal band everywhere else than in Finland really
- and definitely should deserve more attention than what they have
gained thus far. Diablo. You all remember the name now, right?!
Timo Rautiainen & Trio
Niskalaukaus
Finnish-sung Heavy (probably better put that with B-I-G letters:
HEAVY!!) Metal has been a real phenomenon here in Finland (ain´t that
quite obvious…?!) for the last 2-3 years and the true pioneers of this
whole genre could be more than justly considered Timo Rautiainen &
Trio Niskalaukaus without any hesitations. They started it all - became
extremely successful everywhere in Finland and get their all shows sold
out wherever they might play at. Particularly the on-going year has
surely been their the very top of their career thus far - and while I
was enjoying my beer with one attractive beauty keeping me company, I
could not help notice how crowded the whole festival area was -
screaming, sing-alonging, head banging, getting drunk and basically
enjoying both a nice and sunny weather and the aforementioned performance
of the band on the stage, of course!! Trio Niskalaukaus simply keeps on
amazing me every time I see them. The band´s downright heavy, melodic,
yet sorrowful, metal is really captivating and you really can tell by
looking at all those people around you that it does indeed connect
people in a surprisingly big way. There was at least 2000-3000 thousand
maniacs tightly packed in the front of the main stage and fully enjoying
their marvelous manifesto of misery, sorrow and pain… the Finnish way
naturally. Timo Rautiainen & Trio Niskalaukaus was absolutely the
whole Sunday´s most popular act thus far and I bet the band even made a
few of new fans for themselves, winning a fistful of people to their
side who came to see them from outside of the borders of Finland. Their
status to us Finns kind of must be something like what Rammstein means
to German extreme music metal fans. Well, sort of anyway…
Bruce Dickinson
And
finally… Tuska 2002 presents: BRUCE DICKINSON!! Well, what people here
expected to hear from none other than the energetic front man of Iron
Maiden? Of course, most of the audience wanted to hear THEIR OWN fave
tunes from Iron Maiden and also the greatest hits from Bruce´s solo
career. Well then...what we actually got, was a brilliant performance
from the band which consisted of the former SKUNKWORKS album members
Alex Dickson on guitar, Chris Dale on bass, former Alice Cooper / The
Almighty guitarist Pete Freezin, drummer Robin Guy and of course Bruce
himself on vocals. Bruce seemed to have even more energy on stage than
normally. He has always put through a damn good and energetic
performance, but maybe this time there was a little bit more in his
activity because the band was only doing one-off gigs here in Europe at
some certain festivals, kind of like playing every second weekend only.
Bruce´s vocals were in a perfect shape and band played like they could
have been playing the same set already for years all over again and
again…and again - with a mark of ´a-very-experienced-dude´ stamped
on their foreheads.
The set list was truly awesome. When you are playing
songs like: "Powerslave", "The Tower",
"Accident Of Birth", "Prisoner" and "Tattooed
Millionaire", it´s certain that with a following set of songs you
can't get too many enemies, can you?! There was also lots of ´unusual´
stuff like two songs "Back From The Edge" and "
Innerspace" from Bruce's kind of sadly very underrated SKUNKWORKS
album. Then "Bring Your Daughter…To The Slaughter" and
"Revelations" from the Maiden-era that both haven't been
included in Maiden´s set list for many years and two ´new´ songs from
his "BEST OF…" album. The biggest surprise was still yet to
come… The Bruce Dickinson band did an ultimate version of a real
classic (non-metal) Tom Jones song "Delilah"!! Everybody in
the audience got some good laugh at least, but started singing along
with Bruce eventually. This was very funny and kind of a very
extraordinary and personal way to finish their great show at Tuska 2002
indeed.
It was definitely an enjoyable and entertaining show all in all.
Let's hope that there will be some more new material coming out from him
in the future ´coz he obviously knows his ropes as far as classic Heavy
Metal goes.
Here is the band´s setlist for TUSKA:
-
Silver Wings
- Back From The Edge
- Broken
- Revelations
- Accident Of Birth
- Dark Side Of Aquarius
- The Tower
- Tears Of The Dragon
- Laughing In The Hiding Bush
- Innerspace
- Bring Your Daughter...
- Tattooed Millionaire
- The Prisoner
- Powerslave
- Delilah (Tom Jones cover)
It was kinda surprising as a certain amount of Finnish singing bands,
not that metal-orientated in the first place at all, had been booked to
the festival because of their excessive popularity in mainstream music
here in Finland, the organizers of the festival probably thinking that
some of these bands would bring more audience to the festival. Well,
whatever the utter reasons may have been, the whole weekend was
completely sold out which definitely should assure the existence of the
Tuska Open Air Metal festival for the coming years. Hopefully even more
of the same calibre names like Bruce will be booked for the upcoming
bill for the next festival. The Kaisaniemi Park is without doubts an
excellent and ideal place to carry out a metal event and easy to find
due to its location (near by the Helsinki railway station). In
conclusion, we can only spit out the obvious… Tuska 2002 fuckin´
RULED, so see ya at Tuska next year!!
