Photo 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.

2 days into the fest, we got back to the festival ground as early as we could to catch as many bands as possible. We missed out on Torsofuck and Thornspawn, luckily there was more than enough interesting stuff to come and to fulfill our need for extreme and underground music with headliner Blasphemy, Sarkrista, Barathrum, Acherontas, and Dødheimsgard!

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.

We missed out on Licht Des Urteils and Marras, luckily there was more than enough interesting stuff to come and to fulfill our need for extreme and underground music with a massive show by headliners Mysticum, the 3rd appearance of Horna, this time in its present iteration with vocalist Spellgoth, Denial Of God, White Death, Diocletian, and Ifernach.

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.

Sadly we missed out on Cadaveric Incubator and Ereshkigal 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 with some explosive bands on the outdoors stage, with headliners Kroda, Infernal War, Ved Buens Ende, Délétère, and Corpsessed.

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.

Sadly we missed out on Chamber of Unlight this time around 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 with some proper dark and weird performances on the indoors stage with the second Horna show of the weekend, this time with vocalist Corvus, Misþyrming, Krzysztof Drabikowski’s БАТЮШКА, Strid, and Inferno featuring Matron Thorn as a special guest!

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. On the outside stage it’s always interesting the variation of bands playing in full sunlight, going from bands that actually thrive on it to fully corpsepainted black metal bands that sometimes look a bit out of place. But once the sun starts to set a little bit, magic really starts to happen… with headliner Unleashed, Aeternus, Hellbutcher, Craft, and Deathchain on day 1.

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 40 bands filled with cult bands, legends of the underground scene, and exclusive and rare performances. As usual, on the inside stage, you could find mostly acts that required a darker setting to create just right atmosphere and mood for their music to properly translate to a live setting with on day 1 headliner Gorgoroth, the first iteration of Horna with vocalist Nazgul, Antimateria, Commander Agares, Aegrus and Black Altar!

Fans were definitely ready to “FACE IT”, the show with Nothing More, Veil Of Maya and Of Virtue, that is! Concert-goers were lined down the sidewalk and around the block in anticipation of the concert at Kemba Live in Columbus, Ohio.

Of Virtue got the party started for the evening! Hailing from that “state up north” as Ohio State Buckeye fans like to say, the four piece metal band is from Lansing, MI. The band is composed of Tyler Ennis [vocals], Damon Tate [guitar/vocals], Michael Valadez [guitar] and Ryan Trinh [drums]. I had been wanting to catch these guys for awhile and was happy to see they hopped on this stop of the tour while Wage War and Sleep Theory stepped away for the evening due to festivals. They came on stage hard hitting and didn’t let up during their entire set. The singer even sang the hit song “Cannibals” from the crowd. They had lots of energy and they seemed to have a lot of fans in the crowd, which is always great to see!

Second in the lineup was Veil Of Maya, a metalcore outfit formed in Chicago, Illinois in 2004. They are made up of Lukas Magyar [vocals], Marc Okubo [guitar], Sam Applebaum [drums] and Danny Hauser [bass]. They came out and rocked their set from start to finish. A pretty consistent flow of crowd surfers began to come over the barricade by this point, which included the bands photographer, Meredith [drummer in the band VCTMS]. I looked up and realized she had her camera in hand and just got the biggest kick out of that! I was very impressed overall and I will definitely be adding them into my regular rotation of listening. I live for the breakdown and they check that box 100 percent!

After Of Virtue and Veil Of Maya, the crowd was totally amped up at this point and more than ready for Nothing More to take to the stage. The band originated in Texas and the current lineup consists of Jonny Hawkins [vocals], Mark Vollelunga [guitar], Daniel Oliver [bass] and Ben Anderson [drums]. I had high hopes for seeing Nothing More, and it was beyond what I had expected. Music can be a therapeutic and an emotional experience, and this was one of those cases. They are an energetic band, they connect with their fans during the set. Both Jonny and Mark sang/played at the barricade right in front of me during the first 3 songs that I got to photograph. Again, a steady stream of crowd surfers was going on during their set. The circle pit (which I stay away from!) was pretty crazy! There is a balcony at Kemba, and I was able to observe from above and it was gnarly! The one thing I love about this band is that their lyrics do provoke you emotionally. I knew I would cry at some point and it was during Fadein/Fadeout. I didn’t even try to stop it! That’s the great thing about music and that healing piece of it, even at a metal show, we can allow it to heal us a little bit at a time. I was blown away like I had fully anticipated, which means I am looking forward to seeing these guys again!!

Back in April on a very rainy day the gothic-western-blues group Me And That Man led by Nergal, better known from the black metal band Behemoth, flanked by the American rock ‘n’ roll group Frank The Baptist took over the seemingly sold out Korjaamo venue in Helsinki. From all the times I’ve seen Nergal performing with Behemoth with massive stage production and pyro, it was nice to see him playing in an intimate club setting with no barriers, no special stage production, just a band playing rock ‘n’ roll and having fun doing it. This was by far one of the better shows I’ve seen all year, check out the pics down below!

It’s Friday night and the party begins for many young people at the Neue Theaterfabrik in Munich, a beautiful room with friendly people and a very healthy atmosphere. On stage, after nine years and with a much bigger crowd than the first time the band performed in Munich, is the Welsh project Novo Amor. The simplicity and sincerity of the songs is a perfect match for the authors. On stage, there is no cynicism and a complete openness that makes the show authentic and enjoyable to savor. This new European tour is to present their latest album, “Colapse List”, released on the All Points Label this April. The popularity and acceptance of Ali Lacey’s songs seems to be reaching a wider audience, the result of hard work and love for the art he makes. In the midst of so many questions and answers during the show, one doubt remains in my mind: why “Novo Amor”, a Portuguese name that means, “new love”!
It was a beautiful evening and let’s hope it doesn’t take them so long to return to Munich again.

Anneke van Giersbergen, the talented Dutch singer, guitarist and songwriter, has been captivating audiences with her unique blend of rock, metal, and folk music for quite some years. At current, she is on the road exploring new musical territories with her ‘Heavy Strings’ tour in 2024.

While being on stage, her performances are accompanied by string quartet and a piano. In the program, heavy metal and rock classics are interpreted in a new way of semi-classical formats.

Some power ballads are in as well to round up the set-list. Besides her past in metal and speed-metal bands as well as her musical roots in classic and jazz: this approach is not a complete surprise but more like a potentially expectable fusion. The idea was actually already born in 2021 when she performed Metallica’s ‘Nothing else matters’ in a similar arrangement.

Her wide areas of metal genres covering set includes songs like ‘Still Loving You’ (Scorpions), ‘Run To The Hills’ (Iron Maiden), ‘November Rain’ (Guns & Roses), ‘Thunderstruck’ (ACDC) and many more. Probably the most outstanding arrangement is ‘South Of Heaven’ (SLAYER), which was just stunningly amazing. A song you usually would not expect to be arranged like this at all.

With Anneke‘s flawless singing and the ensemble’s performance, each appearance creates an unforgettable experience on stage.