Il portale della musica Heavy Metal

Tuska 2024 - Day 2 - 6/29/2024 - Suvilahti - Helsinki

The sun gave us a little bit of a break on early Saturday, although the weather was still quite hot. Despite that, after a nice meal at the nearby mall - which now actually has a respectable food court - we got straight on with the festival, were Rytmihäiriö and Ankor were simultaneously starting the day.
Since it had been a long time since we last caught Rytmihäiriö live and they can be quite fun, we opted for that show. Of course there were Gambina bottles everywhere on stage and among the audience, who seemed pretty excited even after many, many years of religiously following the band (judging at least by some of the faces in the first row).
The band, to be fair, did start the show with songs like “Kun Mies Juo" (“when a man drinks”), “Spurgurituaali” (“drunkard ritual”) and “Koska Saatana Sanoo Niin” (“Because Satan says so”), and their vocalist Unto climbed down from the stage to sing directly in people’s faces, so I would say the fans’ excitement was pretty much justified. It was also a nice way for people to wake up a bit from the torpor of the morning in between festival days.
Much more calming music was that of Danish progressive band VOLA, who left evidently a nice impression at the festival a couple of years ago when they performed on the smaller outdoor stage. So this time they got a slot on the main one, although earlier in the day, and delighted their fanbase with songs from their newest effort “Friend of a Phantom”, although most of the set was still revolving around the previous “Witness”. Aside from the placid and quiet mood of these songs, what stood in mind was the quirky facial expressions of the guys on stage, including the drummer, which seems quite amusing.



After listening for a while, we headed inside to the Inferno stage to catch at least a glimpse of this strange creature called Agarwaen (since then we had to run to the opposite side for Devourment). The show - at least for those few minutes we managed to stay - seemed to have it all: crazy mental asylum nurses and janitors with creepy masks dispensing Tic-Tac candies from meds containers, loonies roaming around the stage, and all in all a whole lot of action. You could tell the band had really been working hard to prepare this show for the Tuska audience, and it would definitely have been fun to follow through until the end if it wasn’t for the unfortunate schedule clash.
Running towards the tent stage for some daily fix of brutal death, for the next hour we could focus solely on Devourment, as the Texan combo delighted the audience with their first Finnish performance. Making parallels again with having Blood Incantation here at Tuska last time, the Americans filled in this year’s US death metal slot quite splendidly with a tight and brutal set that gave a good boost of energy to keep going through the rest of the day. The show was tight and no-nonsense, with the band unleashing brutality and violence towards the happy audience for one hour, until the final “Babykiller”.



We then went to pay a visit to the main stage for the Hietala brothers. It was a long time since we last saw Tarot live, and it came as a welcome surprise that the band decided to perform again at least for a few festival shows after disbanding 9 years ago, and the death of their drummer shortly after (now replaced by Turmion Kätilöt’s Antero Seppänen).
These seasoned “Kuopiolaiset” brought back lots of nice memories from long ago with their music, they positive attitude and jokes, and the classic laid back presence of Zachary playing guitar cigarette in his mouth. This was definitely one of the highlights of this second day, and a very pleasant moment for all the nostalgic who attended the show or at least paid attention to the music echoing in the area. Since the festival was getting really crowded at this point (that’s what 20000 people feel like when crammed in Suvilahti), it was smart to try and get some food early in the evening before the queues could get longer. Again the choice was very underwhelming compared to the expectations, so it would have been better to stick to more traditional festival food (which we then did on Sunday).
With a full stomach nonetheless, we slowly headed towards the Inferno stage, this time to see the young guys of Malformed. Good to have some extra gore in the mix, and nice to see these kids play with passion and energy… it’s really quite refreshing to think there are quite a few young bands around carrying the torch of death metal. Of course you can often see these guys play in the local bars, but I guess it has always a little bit of a special significance for them as well, once you get to be on stage at a festival with an history such as Tuska. So they also got to check that off their bucket list, and a much younger age than many. Also their show was very much appreciated by the crowd, as they did a really nice job and was still one of the best of our personal daily journey from one stage to the next.



HEALTH performed soon after at the Radio City (tent) stage, and if there was really a time to be dancing, this was it. Having seen them multiple times before, and at their very best just recently in the Netherlands at Roadburn, tonight they still did a great job at entertaining the crowd with their contagious rhythm and catchy tunes. Of course the focus of the show was the latest “RAT WARS”, but there was quite a lot of room to go through their discography. On a side note, it’s always a pleasure to see how much fun John Famiglietti has wandering around everywhere on stage, and how energetic and happy BJ Miller looks whenever he is at the drums!
For how good they were once again today, HEALTH could have easily been headlining any of the three days of this Tuska this edition, but they got nonetheless a great response from the audience.
Still dancing about in the festival area, we returned to the main stage for a Tuska classic: Amorphis.
This is one of those bands that no matter how many times they play here, they are always extremely consistent and never fail to meet their fans’ expectations. Esa Holopainen and Tomi Koivusaari are really the two columns upon which Tomi Joutsen can stand up and flourish with his charismatic presence and voice. Even without being a huge fan of the band one has to admit when in front of some really good musicians.


There was a lot of time to still hang around before the next band - while resisting the temptation to check out what the hell was this Samuli Putro’s Putro in Black thing indoors (the queue was perhaps the biggest of the whole weekend, which says a lot). Eventually we landed to the small hammock resting area for a drink and to chill a little bit while waiting for The Abbey.
Having eluded us so far for one reason or another, it was great to finally have the chance to see them play live, right here at Tuska. Featuring many seasoned musicians from the Finnish scene and with their debut record out a couple of winters ago, this felt like the appropriate way to end the second day of the festival, embracing some gloom and doom with old prog rock vibes, and the slow, melancholic drift into the night, guided by the vocals of talented Natalie Koskinen. It didn’t even bother anymore that there were about 5 trillion degrees inside the venue as it was simply nice to relax and embrace the music for a little while. With Bring Me The Horizon still finishing up their show, the time was right to escape the area before most people would do the same, and head to one of the (crowded) local bars to reward ourselves with a beer after a long day of drinking mostly water and tea. No afterparty this time, but there was still the Sunday for that!

See all galleries from Saturday
Tuska 2024 - Day 1 report
Tuska 2024 - Day 3 report



Report a cura di Marco Manzi