FESTIVAL REPORT: Dark River Festival 2024
If you’re looking for a mainstream metal festival that’s got something for literally everyone and anyone, these days you go to Tuska Festival in Helsinki. However, if you’re one of the old-school metalheads looking for something with a more traditional metal feel, you need to browse outside of the capital city. My personal favorite metal event, Dark River Festival, happened to be celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and since I’ve been on Enslain Metal Merch’s crew for some time now, I was doubly able to come enjoy one of the warmest and most comfortable festivals Finland has to offer. This year’s event took place over August 8-10th, though I was only able to attend for the first two days.
Now, when I’m referring to mainstream versus old-school, I’m not intending any shade. As I mentioned in my Tuska Festival report from earlier this summer, I think Tuska has earned their place as the biggest metal festival in the country, as they come from an old-school background, so if someone was going to hit it big, I’m glad it was them. However, a lot of metalheads do still prefer smaller events that have more traditionally “metal” acts on the roster, which is where festivals like Dark River really shine.
I’ll admit that I was a bit surprised that the festival didn’t have anything notably particularly special this year, considering it was an anniversary event for them. The only thing that I did notice when I had a few spare moments to run around was that they had a slightly adjusted setup. Our merch booth had moved to the other side of the beer tent (which was probably a smart move, to make us more visible) and there were a few more vendors, like the cool Viking couple who sold furs, bones, jewelry, and would do your hair in various Danaerys Targaryen -styled braids for 10€. The folks who regularly attend to sell jewelry had a special set of earrings and a pendant for the festival this year too. Otherwise, not much had changed in the general layout, which is fine because… if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The behind-the-scenes spaces, however, had indeed changed quite a bit. In the past, the backstage areas had been available to everyone and were all in one place, but this year, the festival office was moved to a trailer at the arse end of the backstage, in order to put staff/artist catering in the old building, while the main backstage had some backstage trucks and a small catering tent. I’m not exactly sure what they were using our previous catering garage for this time… it may have been equipment/storage? It also seemed that not everyone who was working (crew, media, etc.) was allowed everywhere this year for whatever reason—it’s a shame if it was for security reasons, as that would imply to me that people have stopped behaving themselves. I also had gotten the impression that medias were no longer welcome to eat at the festival, which was a shame. I’m not sure how I felt about this overall new layout, as it seemed a little less comfortable than I was accustomed to, but perhaps they just genuinely needed more space on the whole.
The food selection was better this year than last, though we’re still missing the Pallas Pizza Wagon. For those who needed that sweet, sweet pizza, it was at least parked outside of the festival area, a few hundred meters down the road, and if there had been a good space to park, I may have stopped by on my way home from the festival on Friday just because they have some of the best pizza I’ve had in Finland. However, the burgers from The Van were again perfectly adequate (my friend was raving about the chili burger all weekend), and I personally had an amazing experience with broccolini tempura from the vegan food truck; also, shout-out to the person working there who had wild energy and I was totally vibing off it—she let me try their kimchi to make sure it didn’t burn my face off (and it didn’t, but I still didn’t dare eat it) and gave me a water bottle too when I decided it was too spicy for my feeble palate. I did still reluctantly skip the BBQ place (again) because their prices are so high, but otherwise the selection was pretty decent overall—at least there were good options for all diets.
Festival organization is always a rough thing to coordinate flawlessly, but things were more or less smooth this year, at least on our end. We at the merch stand had a pretty good time—there were a few items that showed up late or trickled in slowly, but on the whole everything went nicely for us. My friend’s press accreditation did seem to get lost in the ether, but the folks in the office took care of it, no problem at all.
The band selection wasn’t, perhaps, the most tailored to my taste, but there was a lot of material on offer, which allowed for diverse tastes to prevail. The first day limited performances to the main stage, with Domination Black opening up the event. I didn’t know them beforehand but this seemed to be some sort of a near-campy power metal band with over-the-top vocals. I got to check out Suotana for the first time as well—they have really solid melodies and music, so even if the vocalist’s shrieking style isn’t my favorite, I actually really enjoyed their set; plus, I thought their stage look overall (and their logos!) were great. Gaeraea was too thrashy for me to pay attention to but I did abandon my friends at merch to go watch Kiuas’ whole set, because they’re an old favorite of mine and they never fail to deliver an entertaining show. I have to appreciate them because they seem to be all about enjoyment, so if they’re not having fun with what they do, they don’t do it. I really can’t get enough of the way Ilja Jalkanen teases the crowd, as well as the way Mikko Salovaara shreds. They even included “Winter in June” from a very old EP in celebration of DRF’s 20th anniversary. Warmen then wrapped up the first night with yet another very solid performance, mixing their material with a few old Children of Bodom tracks. The soloing was particularly tight on this night, so shout-out to Antti Wirman for the spectacular performance. I also appreciate their light setup for always matching the album’s theme (even if it might be tough for photographers to work with).
Kiuas - "Winter in June" live at Dark River Festival
Friday then began with Omnivortex, who were new to me but put on a really solid show as far as I could tell. Marianas Rest are regulars at DRF these years, about which no one is complaining because they have really solid melodic death metal—I don’t listen to them regularly but I do enjoy hearing them live when I get the chance. Rytmihäiriö were as goofy as ever, singing endlessly about Gambina (a particularly disgusting alcohol, if you don’t know it—a sort of lowest common denominator liquid to get you drunk as fast as possible). Caragh Angren had a solid set, even if their music doesn’t generally suit my taste, while Mokoma put on another standard bangin’ festival show. I felt like it’s been a while since I’ve caught them anywhere, so there was a little nostalgia wash in their music as well that was nice to experience. As I understand it, Manitou had called it quits some years ago and this was a one-time resurgence event, so we popped out of the merch tent to watch it for a while. It was pretty fun overall and I was surprised that a song or two reminded me a bit of if Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden) had a far heftier power metal sound in his solo material. Finally, Exodus wrapped up the night and it looked like they put on a good show, but thrash isn’t for me so I was back at work, listening from afar.
And, of course, it’s worth mentioning that I was told from my visiting friends that Brymir and I Am Your God were the big highlights of Saturday, but I had to go cover a different merch event in Vantaa, so I missed out on them and Katatonia, who would have been nice to see, as it’s been a while and they were an old favorite of mine.
Other feedback? Well, they could have used a bit more sawdust at the main stage on Thursday because the trucks had kicked up a lot of mud, but I’m not sure if that’s the festival’s or the venue’s business to deal with such things. And, even then, it only felt muddy the first day because a lot of trucks were still moving around the area (of course, I can’t speak for Saturday, when it had rained all morning).
Generally speaking, I had a blast, as always. If I’m to once again compare to Tuska, Dark River Festival has become the event where I see all of my friends regularly (Tuska’s just too big for me to find anyone anymore). I have a few friends who live locally that I almost never get to see outside of these sorts of events, so there’s a wonderful feeling of coming home and seeing people that you don’t see enough of otherwise. I’m thrilled that DRF has decided to move to July 11-13th in 2025, which allows them to escape the crossover with the very popular new Hellsinki Metal Festival. Hopefully this means more people will be able to go to the festival next year! On the whole, if you’re looking for a very warm and pleasant metal festival experience in Finland, I can’t recommend Dark River Festival enough. I’m only sorry that I won’t be able to go next year—the new dates don’t cross over with any major metal festivals, but they’ll be losing me to Kosmos, which takes place on the same weekend.
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