Survivors Zero & Sotajumala
Slaughter at Lutakko

March 2010
Released: 2010, Cobra Records
Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewer: Luxi Lahtinen

2 of the Finnish highly popular death metal acts, Sotajumala and Survivors Zero (along with Finland´s Deathchain as well), hit the road together last year on the "Cobra Tour" - and one of this tour´s gigs was captured on film at the semi-legendary Lutakko Club, Jyväskylä by 5 cameras.



Using 5 cameras - kinda ´amateur-ish´ way to capture all that energy and live feeling of these two popular Finnish death metal camps, was a clever and reasonable idea from the crew behind this live DVD. It truly adds this ´I-was-there-to-witness-them-live´ feel to the DVD, which is a great thing.



Talking about the 2 presented bands here a little bit as well, I have said it before and I will say it again, but both of these Finnish death combos are good at what they do. Survivors Zero´s modern and technical approach to death metal - Arch Enemy-meets-Entombed-meets-Testament kind of thing, with monstrous and piercing guitar riffs of Mr. Jämsén, amazingly blistering leads of Mr. Luttinen added with Tommi´s ´pissed-off gorilla´ type of deep grunts, was a very successful recipe on the band´s debut album CMXCIX - and they don´t fail or suck in a live situation either, I can tell. Or, can you go wrong with none other than Tom. G. Warrior´s comment about them after one of their shows during their recent Euro tour together with Hypocrisy: "Seeing you live was a revelation. You have a groove no one else has..." Amen to that. Tom is a wise man...



Sotajumala´s success is also kinda incredible, at least in their home territory, Finland. The band plays heavy, kinda groove-ish and ´expect-no-mercy´ death metal into a murderous Morbid Angel/Suffocation/Cannibal Corpse style, and they do it really well. Every place wherever our Finnish wargods conquer stages, all the venues are packed with hundreds of wild deathheads. So it was this time at Lutakko where Sotajumala wanted literally to slaughter everyone, especially when it comes to the last song of their set, "Kuolinjulistus", in which the crowd was split into 2 parts - and the famous and commonly used ´wall-of-death´ was accomplished at the command of Sotajumala´s tattooed growler, Mr. Luukkainen.



What I found a little bit ridiculous and a little childish even, was inviting like half of the growd to come on stage during "Kuolinjulistus" even if nobody can say kids didn´t have fun there with all the stage diving and headbanging. Hell, even one girl climbed on the stage - and made a pretty brave looking stage dive right on the top of other crazy participants on the crowd. Thumbs up to this young girl for her badass jump straight into the audience.



The DVD also contains the official videos both from Survivors Zero ("Reclaim My Heritage") and Sotajumala ("Kuolinjulistus") as extras - plus a couple of Sotajumala´s live clips, captured by the so-called ´drumcam´. Mr. Häkkinen must be half machine - half human. His drumming is based on lots of very fast and intense blast beats, but also on some other technical variations behind his drum arsenal. He´s fucking amazing anyway.



SLAUGHTER AT LUTAKKO is a good presentation of two of the heaviest and most extreme bands on Cobra Records´ roster (a description of a real live situation - without edits or overdubs), and shows more than well the true strength and potentiality of these two Finnish death troops live. Recommended - and a big hand to Cobra Records for putting this out as well.