29 March 2024

09-04-2009 Combichrist

Supports: Neverdice, Forgotten Sunrise; Venue: Gloria, Helsinki (Finland)
By: Nina Mende

Back in Helsinki for Easter I went to see a show of course and of course at Gloria. This time a band that has never been to Finland before: Combichrist.

Finland has many bands, but hardly any electro bands if even none at all. But there are still many electro fans in this country, so no wonder this event was crowded. I have never seen Gloria that crowded before, and I also have never seen so many ravers, Goths and industrial fans in one spot here. So it was quite interesting to see. The entire event was called Synapsi: a DJ was playing before the bands, during the change over and after, and three bands performed on stage.

The first band I missed, it was a local band called Neverdice. The second one began right at midnight as I entered the club: Forgotton Sunrise from Estonia. Forgotten Sunrise is an Estonian industrial metal band founded in Tallinn in 1992. In their beginnings on the Estonian metal scene, they played support to such bands as Accessory, Hocico, Dimmu Borgir, Katatonia, Destruction, Combichrist, Moonspell, Mortiis and Susperia. They have also presented their music at the Lithuanian Mėnuo Juodaragis festival. As of September 2007, the band has published 8 albums. The singer jumped up and down, quite energetic, while the female keyboarder played chilled out and very relaxed without any hurry. The vocals were sometimes distorted, sometimes clean. You could still tell that they began as metal band but many songs were also very calm. There wasn’t too much power behind the beats. Yet the audience liked it. The singer tried to talk to the audience, sometimes in Finnish sometimes in English, but somehow it wasn’t really understandable. They played for about 40 minutes.

Now everybody rushed up to the front, and where you could easily walk from one side in front of the stage to the other you know had to push really hard to get through and sometimes simply wouldn’t get through at all. So I sort of was stuck in the front row, in the center of the stage. But I felt ready, naïve and unknowing that Finns can be that harsh. As Combichrist entered the stage I already figured that this one won’t be easy though. There was a lot of fog on stage and the flashing lights made it hard to see anything. The audience didn’t care and danced, raved, moshed and what ever else you can do to music. They pushed and hit, I have never seen that much movement in a Finnish crowd. But Combichrist got them going big time. Andy ran up and down on the stage, having a lot of fun and playing with the audience, sometimes even teasing them. I was totally fascinated by their drummer Joe. He drummed like crazy and played with the drums, pushing them over, threw sticks around – couldn’t tell all the time whether it was on purpose or on accident – and just did it so powerful. His face was painted white like a ghost, his arms heavily tattooed, observing the audience with his skinny soft face every once in a while. This guy was hard to read but catching my full attention quite many times. What an amazing drummer, one of the best I have seen so far.
Combichrist also had an extra percussionist, Trevor – that’s his name – played halfway standing on them during quite many songs. Also very fascinating but hard to see because he was on the other side of the stage and there was all the fog; and Andy running up and down or standing right in front of me quite many times as well. The audience tried to get a hold of him at all times, so you could see hands trying to reach the stage and him wherever he went. They cheered out extremely loud and sang along. The keyboarder Z_Marr was energetic in his performance as well, and you could see his dreadlocks spin around the entire time; he also almost hit his head on his instrument. Andy told some jokes between songs before he began performing with a big grin again. It was an extremely powerful show, spreading power through the entire venue, making everybody go along. There was nobody standing still for even a second. More and more people tried to squish up front and the die-hard fans could tell which song was coming just by the first beat of it, shouting it out loud already. They played for more than an hour plus encore. But we could have taken more. It was an amazing show like I don’t see it too often.
It was Combichrist’s first time in Helsinki, and my first time seeing them. I hope they had as much fun here as we did.

Links:
Neverdice MySpace
Neverdice Official
Forgotten Sunrise MySpace
Forgotten Sunrise Official
Combichrist MySpace
Combichrist Official