Il portale della musica Heavy Metal

Steelfest Open Air 2013 - 5/24/2013 - Villatehdas - Hyvinkää

The second Steelfest organized, this year they had both an outside stage (Inferno Stage) and an inside stage (Hanneman Stage), as opposed to last year’s two outside stages across from each other. Another big change for this year was the age limit being raised to 18. This was done, however, to make it legal to serve alcoholic beverages in the entire festival area, a decision that was very well received. Overall everything worked great on the organizers’ end, with all the bands playing on time and with basically nothing to complain about except long bar lines, but that’s the standard for a festival. So, as many artists also did, I have to congratulate and thank the organizers for a job very well done, let’s hope this festival is here to stay.

Friday 24th

Nuclear Omnicide (Hanneman Stage): I heard the last closing scream of these guys, for which I’d like to hand out a warm fuck you to road construction work on the Tampere motorway. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to travel so sloooow by car...
?/5

Gorephilia (Inferno Stage): The outside stage had overall muddier and blurrier sound compared to the inside stage, which was rather annoying since mostly the better (read: death metal) bands played outside on Friday, with the more boring (read: black metal) bands played inside with better mixing. This was clear with Gorephilia as it was at times pretty difficult to make out what they were playing. All-in-all, pretty good death metal.
3+/5

Satanic Warmaster (Hanneman Stage): I was surprised by the rather melodic songs of these guys. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them catchy, but they definitely stood out when compared to the other BM bands. An enjoyable show, even if only the vocalist could afford proper corpse paint, with the other guys mostly looking like slightly angry pandas.
3+/5

Purtenance (Inferno Stage): Old school as fuck, these guys originally played their DM in the nineties, but were dug up from the grave a few years ago. This really seems to be a trend, considering how many old Finnish DM bands have been resurrected during this decade already. Their set and songs were nice and varied, with plenty of tempo changes and progressive elements. It did, however, seem that the second guitarist had trouble keeping up with the rest of the band with many instances of him stopping his playing to get in rhythm with the others.
4/5

The Crescent (Hanneman Stage): The band formerly known as Enochian Crescent really failed to make a good impression. The vocalist looked utterly ridiculous and slightly pathetic wearing what seemed to be full-body winter underwear. It also didn’t help that they had the worst mixing and sound I’ve ever heard, with the drums sounding like hollow logs being hammered with sticks. Totally unlistenable.
1/5

Horna (Hanneman Stage): I popped by Horna after my dinner break, but there’s really nothing to say. At least to me very generic BM, but at least the lighting with multicolored sweeping lights was cool.
3-/5

Vomitory (Inferno Stage): THE reason I decided to come to Steelfest, this was the last gig in Finland for Vomitory, who decided to call it quits after a long career. They had to play with loaned instruments and everything, since their airline had somehow managed not to send any of their stuff out of Sweden. Luckily this didn’t interfere with a great gig. Their old school death has great groove to it, and this was the first time a pit emerged. The gig was intense and all too short, but it was a great way to say goodbye to a great band.
5/5

Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult (Hanneman Stage): DNS was the first BM band that I’ve seen live with a female vocalist, and she did a tremendous job at it. A nice combination of growls and shrieks made this act stand out. She also had the most amazingly long hair I’ve seen in ages, just as a shallow afternote.
4/5

Belphegor (Inferno Stage): I had never been that interested in this Austrian black/death band, but this gig was really convincing. They had nice demonic decorations on stage that helped set the mood, but the different nuances in their music was the real dealmaker. Unlike so many bands even during this festival, they have realized that brutality and blastbeats are nothing but boring without the contrast of more varied segments. Even one bar breaks are enough to break monotony and underline the strength of the more extreme parts. A very intense show after which I really need to get better acquainted with their music.
5-/5

Sodom (Hanneman Stage): It took a few songs to get the mixing right with Sodom. The complete lack of guitar in the sound was so bad that the audience was shouting at the mixer between songs. Luckily, they eventually got it right and everyone could enjoy these grandfathers of teutonic thrash. There was even a enormous pit inside. They played a new song too, called Into Skies of War. Sodom shows no signs of aging and it seems they are determined to keep thrashing ’till the grave.
4/5

Saturday 25th

Dark End (Inferno Stage): For me the first band of the second day was Darkend (or Dark End, they seem to have used both), a pretty new symphonic BM band from Italy. They had an incense burner and other religious paraphernalia on stage which always goes some way to make the set more visual. The melodic parts were well contrasted with the vocalist’s rage and provided for an enjoyable experience. The singer also wore for a while a bloodied white cape and gloves with some sticks attached to them. Weird? Yes. Threatening? Not so much.
4/5

Tyranex (Hanneman Stage): I can’t come up with another band that has a female guitarist/vocalist, and especially not one that would kick this much ass. Tyranex is a brilliant combination of furious riffs and wild leads, not to forget really strong growls and a some falsette thrown in to the mix. It’s not often that someone, especially a girl, outsings Kreator’s Mille, as they did on their cover of Tormentor. They had a new bassist, they played a new, unrecorded song, and for the first time ever live the song Unable to Tame. Definitely a band to watch in the future, hopefully they’ll amount to great things.
5/5

Mörbid Vomit (Hanneman Stage): They’ve only released a single demo so far, so how is it that Mörbid Vomit plays for a big crowd on a festival? I’m sure that the fact that the band consists of members from other well-known bands like The Zombi and Final Harvest might play a part in it. Or it might just be that the band is fucking brutal! Wearing something resembling blood corpse paint, the songs were groovy yet utterly destructive. They didn’t even let the fact that the second guitarist broke his amp during the first song slow them down. “It’s not like you can make out what he plays anyways” and they just kept going. Good that there’s spare equipment on stage. A highlight was a brand new song, with the working title of “öliöliöli”. I’m sure they’ll come up with something more suitable before they release it.
4½/5

Lie in Ruins (Hanneman Stage): Hailing from Espoo, and replacing Baptism, it took these guys a few songs to get up to speed, but once they got going there was no stopping them. Some brutal drum tricks and good riffs, and you’ve got a working package. This was also their only gig this summer, so they clearly gave it their all.
4/5

National Napalm Syndicate (Inferno Stage): NNS played in their original lineup, but this was hardly a cause to celebrate. The vocalist had zero energy and sounded almost as bored as I was with their generic thrash, especially after the explosive Tyranex just a few hours earlier. Instantly forgettable.
2-/5

Necromancer (Hanneman Stage): I had never heard of these guys, and considering that they were active in the early nineties and barely released anything, I’m not surprised. They seemed to be a bigger deal to the old guys in the crowd, but I can’t really see why. It just sounded like Stone Light to me, a bleak copy of a far greater band.
3-/5

Blood Red Throne (Inferno Stage): This Norwegian technical death metal band was for the first time in Finland, and I hope they’ll come back soon. Blood Red Throne was the main act of Saturday to me, and they utterly destroyed, even if the mixing was shit for a big portion of the gig. I just don’t get how badly mixed so many of these bands were. It’s hard to enjoy a band when you can’t hear the vocals or the guitar at all... A definite highlight of the gig was when the vocalist explained how he wasn’t drinking on stage so he could give his best performance: “I’m drinking water for you guys, and I FUCKING HATE WATER!” I could’ve sworn it was Nathan Explosion (from fictitious band Dethklok) on stage.
5/5

Tsjuder

It was a first for me to see Tsjuder live, and I sure wasn’t disappointed. The guys, wearing huge spikes and their traditional face-paint, start immediately with “The Daemon Throne”, igniting the atmosphere of the indoor stage with their raw black metal, hitting the crowd with their music straight to the point.
Not much talking going on on stage, but for what I see of the band’s performance, they really got their thing going. We can say “music talks”. A really good performance that stands for Black Metal fans just about on par with what seen Death Metal-wise a moment ago with BRT. Looking forward to the next time!

Destruction

Time to Thrahs till Death! Schmier and his fellow members come on stage starting with a blast, and a wall of sound that punches the guys in the first rows, still starting a fair mosh pit in the front. These guys just never age, and despite their shows don’t have usually anything so visually appealing to offer, they always manage to kick some serious ass out there.
“Mad Butcher”, “Total Desaster”, and the new “Carnivore” come in succession while people is engulfed in this wave of German Thrash – as it was yesterday with Sodom on the other stage. Maybe the outdoors suits better to this atmosphere, but I just cannot stop myself from getting in there and do some good old headbanging like in the old times. As it’s often the case, the problem here is that the set is too short! (well, also the sound at first seems a bit mixed-up). “Bestial Invasion” and “Curse The Gods” conclude the show, one of the best I’ve seen of them in years, maybe also because I couldn’t actually follow the gig much in Hellfest a couple years ago…

Mayhem

And to wrap up the festival (without forgetting the after party) we have another injection of Black Metal served fresh directly from Norway. Mayhem takes its time to appear on the inside stage, while the fans start calling from the hall. Candles, impaled pig’s heads and skulls decorates the stage, creating once again an eerie setting for what’s to come.
Attila places himself behind the torches, engulfed in the smoke that covers most of the Hanneman stage, and it’s in this dark setting that the show finally begins. It’s far from being the fancy kind of show with pyros and a proper altar on stage as in the bigger festivals, but it’s still eye-candy for many people who haven’t been able to see the band perform at such greater extent. The performance itself wasn’t at it’s best, the band has seen better days, definitely, but it appears to be good enough to get most of the audience going, especially Necrobutcher seems very lively on stage, till Attila decides to come to the front, and appears to be having often some monologues with the skull in his hand.
Highlight of this final moment is certainly “Freezing Moon”, but people at the end of the night had started already to disappear to get to the hotel, train, or slowly head to any possibility of an after party (unfortunately not many came to see Sacrilegious Impalement, too bad).

As for me, time to get a glance to the last band of the weekend in the aftershow venue, grab some food, have a sauna, and finally head to get some well-deserved sleep.

(Tsjuder, Destruction, Mayhem by Marco Manzi)

Photos (all bands) - by Marco Manzi:

Photo exhibition / Valokuvanäyttely


Friday 24th


Saturday 25th


Report a cura di Markus Karppinen