17-10-2009 Metalorgy

Venue: Nosturi, Helsinki (Finland)
By: Sabine van Gameren

Metalorgy festival is up for its second year and seeing that Nosturi, Helsinki (Finland) is pretty filled, we sense the tradition is set. Five bands play this evening.

The first band that enters the stage is Black Light Discipline. The Kuopio based rockers have made their entry to Tempelores in style already and must be familiar to our fanatic readers. The band is up for industrial metal with dark deep vocals and enough melody to make start dancing instantly.
This evening their set was quite short, which was a shame as the band seem to be full of energy and gave it all for the show. The time they had was used to play some of their top songs straight of their album “Empire” and it seems like they get the audience on their hands. Save the best for last, is an ordinary saying, but reviewing the whole evening Black Light Discipline is definitely the topper here.

Up next were Verjnuarmu. This band sings in a Finnish dialect called Savo. Their show contains some elements that must be noticed to gain the whole Verjnuarmu live experience. First of all, the costumes, each character is dressed at their alterego’s occupation. The stage decoration is next. Without these parts, this band would perhaps make less of a difference from any other bands that makes a cross between Death and Folk. The band seems to find muse over everything that is against them, dark life depression and whatever bothers them. For a non-Finnish it is not likely you will understand what it is all about, but the band let the music speak for them as well as the words, so essentially you might be able to get the point even when your eyes are closed.

Fear of Domination is up next and was also present in the first edition of Metalorgy. The band started quite strong with playing the songs that are most easy to pick up even if you have not heard the music before. The audience seemed to appreciate it very well, but a bit further in the set there were two song that were performed a bit messy. That kind of broke the well built tension in the audience and the band left the stage for a couple of second after that. As soon as they were back the party went on where it started with: Danceable party industrial metal to dance frustrations away!

In general it must be said that the live performance of Fear of Domination comes with more aggression than you might have expected if you have their debut album “Call of Schizophrenia” in your collection.

Ajattara is a band that is spoken of a lot in international press after they released an acoustic album, though our latest rendezvous dates back to Eve of Destruction at the very last day of the year 2007. (LINK)

They are less accessible for those who are not Finnish, as lyrics are an important part of their Black Metal tunes. They are quite popular tonight as many people shout and sheer for them. If you keep the lyrics off, I did not hear too much that makes a difference from the various other Black Metal bands and so based on tonight’s show it might not be the most unique band ever, but they seem to get the appreciation of the audience and that loyalty is what makes Ajattara going.

Turmion Kätilöt is the last band of the evening. The intro started and points in the direction of their latest album “U.S.C.H!” but the whole set of this evening seemed to be more around the second album “Pirun Nyrkki”.
Especially the first part of the set was performed quite moderate for what we are used to, less furious. Was it that the band saved their powers for the final part in which they took control over the whole thing again? Or perhaps the shows of the nights before exhausted them a bit? Nevertheless, the band seemed in condition to entertain the audience and give them plenty of what they have been waiting for, some of them waited in front of the venue a couple hours before the doors actually opened.