Nervosa “Northern Tour 2023” (On The Rocks, Helsinki) – 12/04/2023

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It’s been years since I last caught Nervosa live, and since that show in Helsinki that took place shortly before the pandemic hit worldwide, a lot has changed. Sadly, they had to cancel their stop in Helsinki of the tour with Burning Witches, so I never got to see that line-up in action. But now they’re finally here, this time with a line-up that brings us dual guitars, Prika taking over the vocal duties and Hel Pyre from W.E.B. on bass duties. Plenty of exciting stuff to be looking forward to!


Satan's Fall

As support on this tour, they seem to be looking for local talents, and for the Finnish stops, they brought along the heavy metallers of Satan’s Fall. It’s always a pleasure to see these guys live, with their very engaging take on the traditional heavy metal sound in all its glory. It’s interesting to see how Satan’s Fall basically fits in almost anywhere, going from more basic metal fests to underground/extreme metal to being the warm-up for a death/thrash act like Nervosa, and get the same enthusiastic reception everywhere. The old school grooves with regular killer guitar solos, pretty epic vocals, and the overall high energy of every single band member simply strikes that certain chord within every metalhead who catches them on a stage, and I honestly believe they’re one of the best metal acts of Finland at the moment. Perfect band to get everyone get loosened up for what was to come next!

Nervosa

With the recent changes in the line-up and the revealing of Prika being the new main vocalist of Nervosa for the time being, I bet there were quite a few people tonight who were curious to see if the band’s kick-ass live reputation would be held up. And I can wholeheartedly say that it very much did. If you’ve known Nervosa for about a decade, and have seen them live before, it does require some getting used to, but Prika actually handles the role of frontwoman great while still managing to crank out some tasty riffs and guitar solos. And with the support of Helena Kotina on second guitars, the sound is actually really full and heavy, hitting pretty hard. And with on her other side Hel Pyre on bass and behind her Michaela on the drums, the rhythm section seems like a solid machine that brings a great base for some proper Brazilian death/thrash influenced music. Prika was clearly taken aback by all the people showing up for Nervosa in the middle of the week, and expressed her gratitude more than once.

Since this is yet another new iteration of Nervosa, and they hadn’t presented the most recent album ‘Perpetual Chaos’ in Finland yet, it kind of made sense that there was a big focus on songs from that album, beginning with the nice trio ‘Perpetual Chaos’, ‘Kings of Domination’, and ‘Genocidal Command’ and later in the set killer tracks like ‘Time to Fight’, ‘Guided by Evil’ and ‘Under Ruins’. And of course they had to include the most recent single that is the first one recorded with Prika on main vocals; ‘Endless Ambition’. Luckily there was a bit of room still for some old school Nervosa tracks and fan favorites like ‘Death’, ‘Kill The Silence’ and of course ‘Into Moshpit’. I have to say that they sound a touch different with Prika on lead vocals, but it’s definitely not bad at all, and that new track is a bombshell. And having herself surrounded by some stellar musicians and performers, Prika really managed to continue to convince people with their hard hitting shows and be an inspiration for many girls and women in the metal world. I’m excited to see where she’ll take this next!

Setlist:

    • Perpetual Chaos
    • Kings of Domination
    • Genocidal Command
  • Death
  • Masked Betrayer
    • People of the Abyss
  • Kill the Silence
    • Time to Fight
    • Rebel Soul
    • Venomous
  • Into Moshpit
    • Guided by Evil
    • Endless Ambition
    • Under Ruins

For more pics, go see our gallery here.

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