01-01-2009 Finntroll

Supports: Battlelore, Metsatöll; Venue: Nosturi, Helsinki (Finland)
By: Nina Mende & Sabine van Gameren

I did not expect Nosturi to be that crowded on a New Year’s Day. A long queue of metal heads – or let’s rather say of folk metal heads – were waiting outside waiting to get in for the show.

Three bands were about to play, all more or less folk metal. And the fans that were waiting outside were either dressed up for that (as a medieval warrior, gothic, metal stuff…) or had band logos and such painted on their chest with black finger paint as well as stripes and other marks on their faces.

The first band of the night was Battlelore. Battlelore is a band from Lappeenranta, Finland. Their style takes elements from gothic metal, power metal, folk metal, death metal, and, to a lesser extent, industrial music. This Finnish band was founded in 1999 and has five studio albums released so far as well as a DVD. They have a female singer along with a shouter who also sings clean at times and a backing vocalist. The played for about half an hour and had most of the people at Nosturi banging and shouting along. The fists were up in the air and along to the beats of the music which was quite fast but still melodic because of the keyboard and flute played by another female.

Up next was Metsatöll, a band from Estonia. Metsatöll started playing together in 1998 as a three-piece (Markus – vocals and guitar, Factor – drums, Andrus – bass), playing epic heavy metal with small influences from ancient Estonian folklore. The debut album called “Terast mis hangund me hinge” (“Steel frozen in our souls”) was released at that time. Now they are a four piece and have seven albums released. Their music was slower and more melancholic than of the band before, but the audience still banged along, sang along and cheered a lot. TO the question “are you hung-over?” the audience answered with a growl of confirmation. I would not have expected the crowd to be that fit and that huge on New Year’s Day. Astonished I watched the moshing and banging from the upper floor and enjoyed the performance of Metsatöll.

Next and last on the stage was Finntroll. Now everybody was really shouting and wanting them to come on stage. Finntroll is a folk metal band from Finland. They combine elements of black metal with Finnish polka, called humppa. Finntroll’s lyrics are in Swedish, one of Finland’s two national languages, because “Swedish just sounds damn trollish”, according to the band’s first vocalist, Katla (whose native language is Swedish). Founded in 1997 they have five albums released right now. The guys entered the stage wearing kilts. The singer wore a glove for the first songs where the fingers were long but skinny branches. The music was very energetic and funny, because you could hear these humppa melodies in the background of the music. With serious faces and much power they performed for about an hour and caught the fans and visitors at Nosturi. Many people sang along to the songs and cheered out loud after every song. There were even very many females screaming in the crowd. I somehow like the sound of Finntroll, probably because of the melodies and because it was fun music although they all had straight serious faces on stage. Maybe I’ll end up as a (folk) metal fan one day, who knows. Anyway, it was a great New Year’s Day at Nosturi.

Links:
Battlelore MySpace
Battlelore Official
Metsatöll MySpace
Metsatöll Official
Finntroll MySpace
Finntroll Official