11-09-2007 Avoin Kirja

Venue: Virgin Oil, Helsinki (Finland)
By: Sabine van Gameren

In Virgin Oil, Helsinki, was an sort of small festival with mostly punkish bands. Every band plays only 20 minutes so that means there were quite a lot of them. To keep it interesting, I just write about the bands which stand out.

The Stunning Guns. Three good looking young guys making some progressive punk rock. Unfortunately the sound was really bad. That makes it unpleasant to listen to the vocals. I am amazed by the guitarist though. He seems to be the big talent, since producing some really interesting sounds there.

The Wrecking Queens. A band with so called queens. Still, the sound is not very well and for the rest it does not start very promising as well. Unstable vocals during the first song for example. At the third song, the vocals were pretty much increased to an acceptable level. Then it was ok to see. Still, nothing new for me.

Kerho. Here it starts getting interesting. The intro sounded a bit weird to me, but the sound was on an acceptable level now. The singer, dressed completely in white, rocks hard on the stage with her red, star shaped Daisy Rock guitar. Her voice and way of performing reminds me a little bit to the queen of punk: Nina Hagen. She ends the performance with climbing on the drums to jump of them again.

Psychostars. First time I saw a complete band using the stage this night. Very entertaining. Stage act completes the music for sure. I get some extra energy from it. Guitarists and bassist continuously playing a sort of battle with each other. Do you know which side to choose? No? Well, cheer for all of them then! If I was in another country, I probably would be jumping around between loads of others doing the same, but the Finns still seem to be a little shy.

Vanity Ink. If I said Psychostars use the stage well, Vanity Ink may do it a little too much. I get a little dizzy from it. Can’t they just slow it down for a while, it looks a little forced this way. Musically, it was quite ok, but sometimes the vocals tend to much to screaming instead of singing. If they slow it all down a little bit, and this band will be a very nice act where
we probably hear more of.

Kerho: