Hellsinki Metal Festival 2023: Brilliant premiere
11.-12.8.2023, Helsinki, Finland
What I heard, I wasn’t the only one feeling a bit sceptical about this – another Metal festival in the city center, besides Tuska, and parallel to other popular ones (Saarihelvetti, Dark River Festival), considering that some traditional Finnish Rock/Pop festivals bit the dust due to poor ticket sales … and how to solve a pending traffic & neighbourhood disaster when Metal will be blasting in and around the Ice Hall area?
Plus, there was a portion of bad luck handed out only days before doors opened: a headliner (!) cancelled (Helloween vocalist Michael Kiske fell ill), and a pending storm disaster (which luckily wasn’t as bad as expected) had organizers cancel the big Open-Air-Konzert feat. Depeche Mode on August 8…
Well, what can I say – CONGRATULATIONS to the organizer team for this pretty much perfect festival weekend!
Despite all the difficulties, it became a huge success in pretty much every aspect: Fantastic weather conditions, great bands from a variety of Metal genres, fantastic sound, sooo many fans and all of them sooo happy, a media delegation feeling appreciated and taken care of … perfect view to the outdoor stages, sufficient seating areas, a variety of food and drinks, surrounding vendors in a safe and protected area indoors, plenty of sanitary facilities out- and indoors, no traffic chaos – what can I say, EVERYBODY I talked to had only words of praise, and I assume the bands felt the same. I’ll be gladly attending the next one in 2024 – which has by the way sold out the Early Bird tickets already, so better make reservations now 🙂
HERE THE GALLERIES of DAY 1 and DAY 2
The Festival Friday delivered an impressive line-up, featuring the headliner Apocalyptica filling in on very short notice – GREAT! My personal highlights of this day were the veterans VoiVod and Clawfinger – I was surprised to remember so many of their ancient classics to shout along … The audience flocked to Sodom and Stratovarius, but Blind Guardian beat them all, being basically the Co-Headliner. You might have wondered if it’s even possible to top that – but yep, those Cello-Metallers did it with a fiery performance in every aspect. Please, invite Lost-Society Samy Albanna more often for guest vocals (e.g. Sepulturas Refuse-Resist)!
One of the disadvantages of being alone covering three stages at a festival – it’s pretty much impossible, you need to ditch something. In my case it was almost all of the Black Box performances, which featured mostly Black- and Doom bands. Afterwards I heard that I should have watched this awesome All-Girl-Act Asagraum … thanks to Tina’s assistance, I can at least offer a fews cell phone snapshots, plus a few of Chamber of Unlight, Batushka, Benighted, Dark Funeral.
That was the reason I decided to check out the Black Box more often on Festival Saturday and it was worth it, e.g. watching the Doom veterans Pentagram and those Elektro-Metallers Priest, yep, this is how I like my Metal to dance to. And their shows had a nice slot in the program, I didn’t miss my personal highlights of this day, Before The Dawn, Bloodred Hourglass and Samael. This huge crowd watching I Am Morbid surprised me a bit, however, this was still no contest to the headliner of this day, Emperor. Simply awesome performance. Despite planning to, I felt too tired to check out the fiery festival wrap up gig Watain – thankfully Sander took some pics for us. And I also had to decline the After-Show-Parties at On The Rocks and Korjaamo, which offered a fantastic program…
Summing up: Let’s hope Hellsinki Metal Festival is here to stay, it’s worth to put it into your holiday calendar!
