Browsing: Reports

For quite some time I … well ok, we have waited to see what Niklas Etelävuori is going to do after leaving Amorphis in April 2017. And who would have guessed that when only few weeks later HIM announced their farewell tour, the ‘lose’ ends – speaking of Linde (Mikko Lindström) and Gas Lipstick (Mika Karppinen) in case of HIM – would make joint new beginning? And a third adds to the new band: Polanski’s singer Anthony (Anttoni Pikkarainen)! Does that make the new band a ‘super band’? – Yes and No. There is no reason to doubt that the…

Moonspell’s recent album, 1755, was released only in November 2017. I gave the album a try and thought immediately: Wow! I should see them live. Definitely! Actually it came as a bit of a surprise as it was 2006 already that I bought my first and for a very long time only Moonspell album. It was Memorial and somehow it did not really catch me. But then Moonspell is a band you can hardly avoid. And surely you cannot do so for long if you like the darker, gloomier, and somewhat theatrical side of the metal world. The stage is…

The Beasts in Black announced a change in their line-up. Sami Hänninen parted with the band due to “new circumstances” in his life, as he explains online and lasting health issues with his left hand. As he has been a friend of Anton Kabanen, as he mentioned back in summer 2017, long before the band was founded no surprise they part as friends. Sami opens the slot for “an absolute BEAST of a drummer”, as he describes Atte Palokangas who is well known for his activities in many bands – most of all perhaps for Thunderstone with whom he toured…

Time and again, we hear that there is a true story behind the lyrics of a song. And so when lately I had the opportunity to meet Juuso Turkki and Antti Seppälä from THE HYPOTHESIS, I learned from them that there is a true story behind their latest single, too. We sat on a room without windows in the backstage of the Nosturi, where they played a show during the Metal Crane Festival. In the room next door Whispered sat and had lively conversation in Finnish. Our conversation started lightly. At some point Juuso even joked that Antti could stop…

What are you going to do to fight the blues deriving from the lack of light on the darkest of Northern, midwinter nights when the chilly winds cut the skin of your face and frost bites through your pants? – You spend your time and energy on banging heavily to the heart-warming sounds of carefully selected choice of decent melo death bands? And who could provide a more inviting setting than a bunch of Northern masters of shredding strings and roaring growls? So all you need now is a decent festival which will offer all this. Backstage Metal And what…

Who would have thought this possible only some months ago? But there it has happened right in front of my eyes! The black haired opera singer-like diva Tarja Turunen and Marco Hietala, her blonde, former Nightwish mate and metal bard stand on stage together, arms around each others waist, singing from the depths of their hearts leaving the vast audience in amazement and awe. It is the very last song of the show. And damn, what a show it was! I have come to Turkus’s Logomo for the second time to experience Raskasta Joulua (= Heavy Christmas) and it is…

The sounds of Judas Priest’s „Night Crawler“ introduce a roar exploding from the throats of Mate Molnar (bass) and Anton Kabanen (guitar) „Berserkerrrrrr“ unleashes the Beasts in Black! The Greek master bard Yannis Papadopoulos hushes only little later the obvious: „the Beast is back“!  But lets go back in time by perhaps by an hour or two because my personal Beast in Black concert experience started with an remarkable encounter or less pathetic a cup of coffee and a decent conversation with Anton (Kabanen). „When could we make the interview?“ – „Now?“ he asks carefully. Most appreciatively, he suggests to leave…

Why writing, or in your case reading a portrait of Olli-Pekka “Oppu” Laine? Easy answer: He is a bassist of mesmerizing skill. He is playing with the Finnish masters of Barren Earth and Amorphis. And he is a composer of enchanting tunes and a strong affinity to progressive death metal. That’s why! The songs Olli-Pekka Laine has written for Barren Earth so far are profoundly progressive, abysmally dark and oppressively heavy. It takes time and even a good deal of effort to access them and explore their complexity to the end. Their diversity is a gloomy labyrinth and just like…

Hier geht’s zu: Raskasta Joulua – ein finnisches Weihnachtsmärchen “Christmas truly is the time of miracles”, Erkka Korhonen states in a post thanking audience, musicians, and all helping hands enabling the Christmas concert of Raskasta Joulua in Finland becoming a story of success. The big success is the result of hard work, careful planning and taking risks but perhaps most of all believing in the concept of the shows. The story started thirteen years ago and by then today’s reality seemed no more than a dream or faint hope. Obscuro.cz presented the history of the concerts in four-parts interview with…

I don’t write reviews yet I write about music and what music causes me to feel, what I relate with what I hear, and why I like what I hear, perhaps at which point I would wish something different. So let me introduce you to the Lone Gunmen and their EP „Dawn“! I listened to their songs a couple of times before I met Hendrik Noack (vocals) and Robin Görss (guitar), two out of four of the Lone Gunmen from Siegen (Germany). Simple, straightforward, raw and authentic songs the four men aimed to come up with when they founded the…

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