The first heavy metal act of the night was also by far the best live act of the whole festival; Chevalier delivered such a celebration of heavy metal with their incredible riffs and vocals sending any fan of heavy metal into a headbanging frenzy. Sadly, many people used this slot to get drunk or to eat since the venue was relatively empty for this Finnish metal act. Maybe this wasn’t the kind of metal many of Steelchaos attendees would expect from the festival but it’s their loss, since this reporter also went to their show without knowing anything about the band and was completely blown away by their performance. Fantastic stuff, can’t wait to see them live again!

Horna was like always, Horna. Trustworthy band to have on your festival to please any fan of black metal. Great last minute replacement for the unfortunate cancellation of Sadist. Horna delivered a solid show with the same tropes as usual with speeches by Spellgoth in between songs praising the almighty Satan and all things unholy. Even though Horna probably wasn’t the band why many people bought their tickets, they still drew by far the biggest crowd of the festival, which is not a surprise, Horna always delivers a celebration of darkness. Great show overall, nothing special but nothing bad about it either.

Now it was the time for the first proper grindcore band of the festival, Cadaveric Incubator. They literally made my knees buckle in the photo pit with their intense blast beats and chugging riffs vibrating through my whole body. This band absolutely crushed it, I hate using this word but it was truly brutal. No BS just face melting Finnish grindcore.

The pattern of face melting blast beats continued when some bad looking mf’ers took the stage, Finnish death metal veterans Torture Killer. After Horna this by my point of view drew the biggest crowd and was clearly very anticipated with many attendees in the barricade way before the show started. This show missed something in my mind and really wasn’t my cup of tea so to speak, but kept my interest to watch half of the show. Solid performance but something was missing, maybe I was tired or just too excited waiting for the headliner.

After a couple black and death metal bands, it was time for another old school heavy metal band when Lord Fist took the stage. After the fantastic performance by Chevalier, there was much to live up to, but Lord Fist delivered. Again, at this point clearly many people used this time to get drunk and missed out again on a great heavy metal band since the venue was fairly empty for this one, sadly. That didn’t slow down the Finnish Lord Fist giving their all on stage, and by the look on their faces they clearly enjoyed performing at Steelchaos. Great show and a great choice to have as your last act before the headliner.

After some clear technical difficulties, the almighty Venom Inc. took the stage. At this point it was very late after being almost half an hour late and half of the crowd already left. Nevertheless, Venom Inc. performed like there’s no tomorrow and the guitarist Mantas clearly enjoyed being on stage. Even though original Venom drummer Abaddon wasn’t part of this celebration (rumors said that he sadly had to pull out of the anniversary tour after being diagnosed with cancer, all the best to him). Venom Inc.’s regular drummer War Machine though handled his duties with flying colors, not too surprising after having been with the guys for about 4 years now.

Since it was the legendary, breakthrough ‘Black Metal’ albums 40th anniversary show, they played that classic album in its entirety. The band sounded great after few technical mic mishaps during the opening song, which the crowd patched up great though, knowing every lyric word for word. In the last few songs of the set, bassist and vocalist Demolition Man took notice that almost the whole crowd left, leaving most likely 150(?) attendees in the crowd, appreciating everyone who stayed that late and gave the front row a full bottle of Jack Daniels to enjoy. Even though a minimal crowd, there was a front row of full of headbanging and a constant moshpit celebrating one of the greatest heavy metal albums ever made.