Susperia / Destruction / Dimmu Borgir
Nosturi Helsinki Finland
May 22, 2001
Pictures and pictures by Arto Lehtinen
When
two leading extreme metal bands from different metal genres and from the
two separate decades are put together and sent out onto the same
tour, it is evident that this sort of package will successful. This
is especially the case because both the bands get their own audience;
Destruction appeal to the old school thrashers without getting out to tour
with Dimmu Borgir the German thrash metal legends would have never ever
had an opportunity of visiting Baltic countries and finally to end up to
Finland. To be honest it was about TIME to get Destruction to these
latitudes.
Besides two main bands, the Norwegian's, Susperia, had been booked to
fill up the opening slot to warm up the audience. During a 30-minute set
they mainly concentrated on doing the stuff from their debut album Predominance
and received the damn good respond from the entire packed club. As a
matter of fact the band basically rides on the reputation of the band's
drummer more or less. When drummer Tjoldav, being the former Dimmu Borgir
battery man, rose to stand up cheering the audience and without any doubts
got the wildest and loudest hails from the Finnish audience.
Unfortunately, the utter crap sound quality ruined Susperia's set quite
badly and in general the sound policy during the whole night was really
awful - to be honest, total shit for every god damn band. Was the mixer
deaf or just helpless or what?! No, instead there was a kinda simple and
logical explanation for these worthless sounds. The bands were supposed to
come to Finland by ship from Baltic countries, but of course a ship had
got broken in the harbor of Tallinn and all the logistic plans, sound
checks and generally the whole schedule got of course fucked up and the
bands didn't have that much time to put the finishing touches on the
sounds…Fortunately they didn't cancel the gig or there would have been a
massive riot and fight in the front of the club. Anyway, Susperia tried to
do what they could.
After a desperate long roadie break the thrash metal trio took the
stage by opening the set with "Curse the gods " off from Eternal
Devastation. As stated above, the sounds were already utter crap for
Susperia, so Destruction also suffered from the same miserable lousy sound
problems. Despite the hollow and dry sound quality, they thrashed and
provided what the true old school thrash metal is all about. Kinda
needless to say, but the atmosphere in the pit was literally insane as the
crowd was thrashing slamming like maniacs. The set mainly consisted of the
tracks from their 80's albums for example "Mad Butcher, Bestial
Invasion, Total Desaster live without sense"… Every one reading can
guess if they did any tracks off from "Release from Agony" or
"Cracked Brain"…Despite the set was more into the stuff, but
however the Germans did at least two tracks from "All
Hell breaks on Loose". It gotta be admitted newer tracks for
example Butcher strikes back fits damn well to the bill beside the old
stuff..
Afterwards after doing the gig Schmier used to walk around the gig
venue talking to people and and giving autographs, he even revealed
Destruction will come back to Finland within this year with Kreator and
Sodom. Hopefully that will come true in every aspect.
Dimmu
Borgir have enjoyed the loyal following here since the " Enthrone
Darkness Triumphant " album and even the latest output "Puritanical
Euphoric Misanthropia" went direct to the Finnish national
top 40 chart spending several weeks there. Despite this, the band has a
conflicting reputation amongst metal fans for one reason or another,
but there was no a sign of any kind of skeptical conflicting opinions in
the audience when the band entered the smoky and dark stage. Instead the
atmosphere became heat and even passionate when people welcomed the band
by rising their hands and fingers up into the air.
But trying to keep up some sort of note of played tracks became utter
frustrating, cos surprise surprise the sounds were quite awful making the
job more and more difficult. Both Shagrath's voice and Nicholas Parker's
drum working literally crushed the guitar sounds which were entirely lost
and obviously Mustis with his keyboards had been forgotten somewhere to
the darkest and smokiest part of the stage cos nothing could hardly be
heard. Something could be made out of the set cos the Dimmus did a bunch
of tracks off from their latest album like "Blessings Upon The
Throne", "Puritania". Fortunately this time they avoided
doing any cover tunes like they used to play Accept's "Metal
Heart" previously.
Silenoz's part in singing cleaner parts sounded pretty ok which
definitely gave a welcomed nuance to the overall impression of the gig
even though Shagrath's blackish delivery has obvious strongest approaches.
As all of know Astennu dismissed the band a while ago, but it gotta be
admitted the front man of Old Man's Child as a replacement fitted the line
up perfectly and hopefully he will remain to the band a little bit longer…
Hmm obviously Dimmu Borgir's gig had been caught up by believers'
attentions as well, cos a middle aged looking man, stylistically dressed
up in a clean suit was witnessed walking all around the venue. Probably he
was there enjoying the Norwegian black metal like almost other 900 people
there.
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Destruction
Dimmu Borgir
Susperia
