23-06-2016 Nummirock Metal Festival

[schema type=”event” evtype=”Festival” name=”Nummirock Metal Festival” sdate=”2016-06-23″ edate=”2016-06-25″ street=”Nummijärvi” city=”Kauhajoki” country=”FI” ]
Review by: Reija Myllynen & Juho Karila
Photos by: Juho Karila

Nummirock is always the most anticipated summer event for us, because not only it’s held at the time of national midsummer holiday, aka. Juhannus. But then there’s this unique feeling in the air when you’re in middle of woods, by a lake at the time of midnight sun.

You can sense the aura of belonging only by entering the camping area and seeing the festival gates; everyone has arrived to have fun and enjoy some of the greatest metal bands in the world and smaller local names still proving their name. And then there’s the organizing.

We’ve been to Nummirock before and we’ve always been really statisfied how well the festival is organized. Now for the first time through a reporter’s point of view, I must say that there isn’t many fests that have been organized so well, thank you for that. We really enjoyed ourselves well and for once the weather was also good. Especially nice was that the timetables didn’t overlap and only one band played at the same time; except for the two final ones on last day due the second to last one playing overtime.

But let’s get into the point…

Inferno Stage 1800: Mörbid Vomit
The evening starts with heavy growling, served us by a death metal band Mörbit Vomit. On the second biggest stage Juho had been anticipating them more as he had listened to their album so he was more eager in getting to see them. Their stage-presence is strong and aggressive as you would expect from a band this aggressive and fast but we both agreed that after the first few songs, they started sounding like repeting themselves to the disappointment of both.

The bassist was good and lively, his headbanging was nice to watch and seemed to inspire the crowd but the overall lack of contact with the audience left us unimpressed.



Kaaos Stage 1900: Blind Channel
Right after, Blind Channel started their set on the opposite stage. Previous time had proved us these youngsters to be a band who shamelessly mixes pop, electronic and even rap with their music in a good way. The positive energy just flows down from the stage as they’re seemingly happy to play here and it’s always a pleasure to watch jumps that lands perfectly on the beat, forcing to bob your head with a smile. Kudos especially for very varied and dynamic use of voice.

This “violent pop-quintet” as they label themselves, was founded in 2013 and you can still see and hear their young age a bit, yet they left us with a longing to get more. And more we’ll surely hear as they won the Wacken Metal Battle Finland in 2014.

Inferno Stage 2000: Turmion Kätilöt
These industrial metal masters never fails to deliver a good show. Neither did they this time as they were strongly present sicne the first song and they acknowledged the audience strongly; we could see why they were one of the most anticipated acts of the day. The contact with the audience could be shared with all members and not just the singers but this has been their style for so long that I don’t think anyone expected anything else because the charismatic singer-duo MC Raaka Pee and Spellgoth does it delightfully well.

Despite difficulties, Raaka Pee had undergone a hip surgery and had to use a crutch, which he threw down the stage during the first few songs, they didn’t let anything bother them and their show was just as intense as ever. You just got to respect that.

At this point we decided it’s dinner time so we weren’t able to see Gloria Morti but we got something at least as pleasant as the amount and variety of food vendors in Nummirock has always been great. There’s a little something for everyone we really were delightful to see our favorite, a chinese food stand selling different kinds of wok from meat to tofu, with rice or noodles. Big meals for cheap price, extremely tasty for festival food.

Inferno Stage 2200: Fleshgod Apocalypse
Italian epic metal masters were the first foreign band to rise up onto the stage in Nummirock. Their bombastic music felt rumbling and rolling over to us with their energy and music, which was nicely dynamic and worked fine on late summer evening. They had thought their show well from costumes to the songs as the audience seemingly liked the heavy and dark meta l opera but to us, they left longing for a little bit stronger presence on the stage.

Kaaos Stage 2300: Altaria

Finnish power metal cult band who had spent many years of silence before finally emerging in 2016 was one of the most intresting shows to behold, at least for our photographer. The band has featured many of brightest finnish power metal starts, including names like Jani Liimatainen (who we saw on the stage) and Emppu Vuorinen, to name a couple.

Their stage-presence was strong, which is nothing more that you’d expect with a line-up like them and it looked like they were on their home up on that stage. Speeches between the songs told about the band’s history since they seemed to be a bit of a mystery for some of the people, but it seemed only fitting as this was their farewell show. We couldn’t notice much of them getting sentimental, or at least letting it show on the stage but the contact with the audience is something we could had got more.

Inferno Stage 0015: Stratovarius
Stratos have a speaciel place in our heart as it can be considered as the band that got us into metal, so our expectations were high and they didn’t let us down. The show started really gracefully and with the professional intensity and integrity we’ve got used to seen on all of their gigs. They were genuinely happy to play and there wasn’t anything that hinted the power metal giants to having a routine of playing as they were there for the audience, leaving us only a one question: would they play on the main stage the next time?

Kaaos Stage 0115: Wolfheart
Expectations were high for the melodeath veteran Tuomas Saukkonen’s most recent band, not only because of his previous career with Before the Dawn but also because they had the final band slot for the day.

And their show didn’t leave us cold as pyros lighted up the sky and music immersed us in aggressively charismatic way. The playing was equal to the level what was right to expect from a band featuring such a frontman. Would had only been nice to see some more movement on the stage.