19-10-2009 Laava

Supports: Traumat; Venue: On The Rocks, Helsinki (Finland)
By: Sabine van Gameren

Two bands were playing on this Monday evening in Helsinki’s On The Rocks. This gorgeous Finnish club has invited these bands to rock for those who can’t get enough of the weekend.

First band is Traumat. They make punk rock music with a raw rock n roll edge. Good to see is the fact that their singer is totally into it, although is audience seems to be suffering a weekend hangover as they all watch it quietly from their chairs. Maybe this is not the band that you should go see on a Monday, but a band that you want to see in the late afternoon of a summer festival, with a beer in your hand spitting the frustration out of your body with the words of the lyrics, but when the Finnish days get shorter and shorter, the Mondays get darker and the energy level drops down it just ain’t work. At least it is not the music to blame, the band plays some nice riffs, maybe sometimes a bit too much alike, bombbeating drums and well… the energy is just there.

Up next was Laava. The band seemed to have started in 2006 with their rock music career. It did not worked out for them either to get the people in On The Rocks go nuts. The band could not catch me at all, the music itself did not stand out that much from anything I have heard before and their set was not built constructively. A bit more variance might have spiced it all up, but for this evening they just could not convince me at all. Perhaps if they had played first it would have been easier to keep my interest as the singer of the first band is much more of a stage personality than the singer of Laava. When Laava gets their setlist a bit filled with songs that seemed to built on a more different foundation than what has been done over and over again before I might consider to see them again.