Festival Reports
It’s that time of the year again: The Finnish festival summer gets kicked off properly with the black metal festival Steelfest! The gathering of the wolves of the underground is easily a yearly homecoming for anyone who has a love for the extreme and obscure. And as always, the lineup is massive with an impressive list of 46 bands filled with cult bands, legends of the underground scene, and exclusive and rare performances.
After last year’s extended anniversary edition, they decided to permanently add an extra day to what used to be a 2-day celebration of the underground. After a first day of great shows, we got back to the festival ground early to catch as many bands as we could. Sadly we missed out on Rienaus, Gaurithoth and Ritualization because we simply couldn’t get there that early, but luckily there was more than enough to fulfill our need for extreme and underground music…
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It’s that time of the year again: The Finnish festival summer gets kicked off properly with the black metal festival Steelfest! The gathering of the wolves of the underground is easily a yearly homecoming for anyone who has a love for the extreme and obscure. And as always, the lineup is massive with an impressive list of 46 bands filled with cult bands, legends of the underground scene, and exclusive and rare performances.
After last year’s extended anniversary edition, they decided to permanently add an extra day to what used to be a 2-day celebration of the underground. So on ascension day, we already got to make the trip to Hyvinkää for a first day of exciting shows…
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Finally! After several times having to postpone due to the pandemic, we have a sequel to 2019’s well received Hoarsefest, the small festival put together by the Oceanhoarse guys. A fest that heralds the local Finnish up-and-comers in the metal scene and provides clinics by renowned names from that same scene like… We sadly had to miss out on the first couple of bands, and Thy Row, but I’m pretty sure they all killed it!
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Every year again, Elektrik Products brings the best and most exciting bands from the industrial, goth, EBM, (dark) elektro, darkwave and cyber scene to Finland for Hellsinki Industrial Festival! After last year’s edition on the new location, we get to return to Ääniwalli for yet another exciting fest there. With major artists like suicide commando, Faderhead, Agonoize, Centhron and Gothminister besides a nice slab of more fan favorites and surprisingly different artists, this promised to be yet another massive party!
Due to a late night and traffic not working along, we ended up missing out on Matt Hart opening the 2nd day of this year’s edition, but luckily there was still plenty to enjoy!
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Every year again, Elektrik Products brings the best and most exciting bands from the industrial, goth, EBM, (dark) elektro, darkwave and cyber scene to Finland for Hellsinki Industrial Festival! After last year’s edition on the new location, we get to return to Ääniwalli for yet another exciting fest there. With major artists like suicide commando, Faderhead, Agonoize, Centhron and Gothminister besides a nice slab of more fan favorites and surprisingly different artists, this promised to be yet another massive party!
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Steelchaos day two was clearly the main day for many people as it clearly drew the biggest crowd with a fantastic lineup from old school heavy metal to skull crushing death metal and to good ol’ Finnish black metal. Even though the more classic heavy metal acts all delivered, it was very clear that still this festivals target audience enjoys more of the extreme music when the biggest hordes gathered during the more extreme metal bands. The festival area concept still worked well with minimal lines to get beer or food but the toilet situation was a complete disaster when men’s inside bathrooms were out of commission, that’s really the only complaint about the arrangement of the festival, just sort your shit out, quite literally when it comes to proper toilets for drunk metalheads to do their needs in.
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After the glorious and epic return of Steelfest last spring (check out the reports here, here, here and here), now it’s time for its little brother (or sister if you so will) Steelchaos! This would be the first edition that takes place with a proper live audience at the “new” location. And on top of that, there is a stellar line-up again, with compared to the last edition of Steelfest, way more variety and room for other genres like death metal and traditional heavy/speed metal. And with the cherry on top, the Finland exclusive show of Venom Inc. celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Venom classic ‘Black Metal’.
But that was for the next day. First we traveled down to Hyvinkää, to the all too familiar Steelfest grounds where the indoors venue would be the place for Steelchaos from now on. With on the Friday a lovely line-up with Finnish natives Satan’s Fall, Malicious, Flame and Barathrum, topped off with the Austrian black/death metal maniacs Belphegor and Swedish melodic death/black metal legends Sacramentum, we got a proper start of 2 days of underground metal madness!
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The last day of Graspop 2022 was the best day for me. So many old school rock bands and my favorite band: The Offspring. The whole day was filled with excitement. Plus, the weather was also less burning. A little breeze of wind and a few drops of rain were welcome after the scorching heat from the day before.
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On the 3rd day of Graspop 2022 we got to enjoy a lot of classic rock bands. Bands that are often forced to play their most famous songs last or else the crowd will get angry. Bands like that. You know them, even if you think you don’t. On this day it was really hot, up to about 31 degrees. Scorching, but free water cooled us luckily somewhat.
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Heaving been sick the previous days and having to skip the first day sort of (except for some live streams), I was so happy I finally got to the holy grounds of Graspop Metal Meeting. It’s been long enough, having to wait for 2 years, I’m not going to miss it a 3rd time. So I took my stuff and got over there. A bit of a hot day already, but definitely still doable. So glad I made it to the holy grounds.
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