Metalheim

October 7, on board of Air Berlin.

Last weekend we did the Metalheim festival in Finland. The festival was put together by the booking agency Metalheim with whom we were for a while. Now Rock the Nation is taking care of our business in Finland too. Basically everywhere except the Americas. Anyway, it was a 2-day festival in the different cities, Oulu and Helsinki. The bands who played in Oulu on Friday played in Helsinki on Saturday and vice versa. Nice concept although I would have preferred cities a bit closer to each other…

We started in Oulu on Friday. Our crew and gear had left already on Thursday evening, the band started the journey on Friday morning. We did the trip with Jonne's car where we could easily fit the whole band. We had decided to leave Tampere at 10 and to save Jonne's time I did the round in Tampere and gathered everybody to the local bus station. We had a soundcheck waiting at 16 and that where we were aiming. The trip went as planned. Until Pyhäsalmi, Pyhäjärvi whatever that was. We stopped for break at the local gas station and when we got back to the car we noticed that the right back tire was almost empty!
- "Where's your spare tire?"
- "I don't know. Do I have one?"

We asked some locals if there was any chance of finding a tire repair shop there. We got lucky. Even though we were basically in the middle of nowhere, there was a local branch of one of the biggest tire chains only maybe 3km away! We filled the tire and drove there.
- "Hello! We have a flat tire, can you help?"
- "You will have to wait until I've finished shoveling this."
The guy was eating.

Since the summer tire season is basically over the place was full of winter tires but no summer tires of the size we needed. Nothing even close.
- "But you guys do really need a tire. Let's see what I can do."
We finally left there with one used tire that was actually in a better shape than the other three…

We even managed to get to the soundcheck in time. Almost at least. The first song we played at the check was a song from the forthcoming album (February 4, 2011). Jonne had an idea that we'd do that in the evening too. It didn't go that well. I for example recorded that in the studio with a bass down tuned a full step and live I am on standard tuning. I am just not good enough to transpose on the fly!

Otherwise it was a loooooong evening. We were headlining and our showtime was at 0.35. We finished the soundcheck a bit after 17 and we had nothing else to do except to listen to Popeda and wait. Me and Jonne at least took his car to the hotel, checked in and walked back to the venue, Teatria. That took half an hour. We still had 6 hours to go. We really just sat at the venue. Boring as hell. Had a few beers and some wine though.

Teatria always has a tight curfew at 1:30. So we were schedule to play 55 minutes. The band before us whose name I can't remember now, maybe Sólstafir or something like that, played too long and our change over took too long because of a too drunk violinist so in the end we played maybe a 45 minute set. In my opinion not even a real show. That put together with the fact that the attendance was a huge disappointment, I'd say that it wasn't really worth going through all the trouble to play that show. Although the audience that there was was a good one, as is always the case in Oulu.

After the show the local guys were taking us to a bar. Or trying to. We ended up in the upstairs pub of some nightclub. I guess it was ok although it had been a terribly long day and another one was ahead.

We had parked our car in front of the hotel where you have to pay for parking. I had put 2€ to the machine which gave us time till 9:16. That's when we left then. I was really surprised how Jonne actually managed to drive since he hadn't had that much sleep either and everyone else in the car was sleeping and snoring anyway. We did stop for breakfast after about 80km. A place starting with "P". Pulkkila?

Since Jonne was going to leave right after the show in Helsinki and would not be driving us back to Tampere we stopped in Tampere to take my car too. I drove alone to Helsinki, found a parking place near Omenahotelli at Lönnrotinkatu and walked to Nosturi. A small side note: The journalists' listening session for the last album Karkelo was held at a small studio on Bulevardi. Afterwards we were taken for a dinner at the close by Thai restaurant. We were already then wondering that. Why are we, a really Finnish band, taken to a Thai restaurant? Now when I was walking down Bulevardi I even noticed a fucking Lappi restaurant maybe a 100m away! Why didn't we go there?

Now to my favourite topic: food. Nosturi had excellent vegetarian food and more importantly it had a sign telling that it's strictly for vegetarians. Usually the veggie food is gone before I get to eat even if I was the only vegetarian of the tour. Anyway, the food was excellent. Lots of lovely fried tofu cubes!

The day in general was the same as the day before, long and boring. We really had nothing to do. We had decided to skip the soundcheck anyway so there indeed was literally nothing to do. Some guys like Jonne tried to get some sleep where ever possible. Kalle and myself just sat at the backstage listening to Popeda. While doing that we even finished a bottle of Koskenkorva just to have something to do. It didn't really work that well. The other bands at the same backstage even liked Popeda so we couldn't even annoy them.

The show itself was better than in Oulu. The place was not even close to being full but still better than the day before. Honestly I think that with better timing Metalheim in general would have been a bigger success. There were also two other metal festivals in Helsinki that weekend. Anyway, the band was tight and the audience was nice. We played a slightly longer set since there was no curfew and since the violin player was way more sober than in Oulu it was after all a nice show.

Afterwards it was a bedtime immediately. We walked back to the hotel via a kebab kiosk and went to bed. I was sharing a double bed with Kalle. He snored. Got up around 10 in the morning and drove home. Actually we did make an extra stop. We stopped at the retail hell of Ideapark in Lempäälä since there was a record fair. Hittavainen stayed in the car and slept but Matson and myself went shopping. I got myself some 7" and 12" singles. I am indeed a sucker for vinyl singles. Excellent stuff.