FESTIVAL REPORT: Tuska Festival 2023
A report from Tuska Festival, you ask? On this website? What a novel idea! Since when do I do this? Well, you see, I had plans to skip Tuska this year because that festival has gotten a bit too big for my britches, at least. My favorite thing about Tuska was always bumping into people that I know that I never see anywhere else. Of course, don’t get me wrong, I did bump into plenty of people I knew last year, but the issue was that I couldn’t find the people I was looking for. It was just too big. And this year sold out! We heard that there were 63,000 people there! Also, I wasn’t especially interested in almost anyone who was playing this year, with the exceptions of Vansidian and The Hu. But in the end, you know how it goes, right? You plan to skip it for the first time and then people start asking if you’ll be there and get disappointed when you say no… well, ultimately, this meant that I got my press pass through this website this year! Of course, if you want to see all of Laureline Tilkin’s great photos, or read the surely far-more-detailed review of all the bands from Jani Lehtinen, make sure you check out Tuonela Magazine. Me, I’m in it for the atmosphere now, so let’s see where the wind blows us!
So, first up, we remembered from last year that the wristband queues were astoundingly long. I am fortunate to be able to use the fast-moving VIP/press/staff exchange queue, which is in a totally different room in the mall, but I always come with friends and it seems like a dick move to cackle at them and sprint away as they have to wait, only to then go to the festival alone—not quite my modus operandus. So instead, we went in to Redi mall on Thursday to get that done with in advance. I do still miss the Tuska-kiska in the city center by Kamppi mall, which did a wristband exchange and also sold discounted merch leftover from the previous year. It’s a shame they don’t still do that. They did set up a merch booth inside the mall though, so you could pre-buy your Tuska shirts before the festival, but there weren’t any old shirts or things like that, unfortunately. I do, however, like that they have some classic Tuska posters in the VIP/press ticket pick-up area, as they add a nice nostalgia vibe for us old attendees and some cool history for the newbies.
The festival area this year was set up pretty much in the same way as last year and I didn’t clock anything too new this time around, besides some general changes in vendors. We didn’t check out the Black Dining or the Forum (which included the “Heavy (Drinkers) Corner,” which was just a bar as far as I can tell), but Kattilahalli had a nice expo of random things inside (as well as more Tuska merch), such as a pagan witch burning place, a freakshow suspension workshop, some various different artwork, and of course, artisinal shops with drinking horns and Corpse Paint Soaps and other fun and relevant things. I’ve always loved that the Tuska organizers don’t include bullshit at the festival—and by bullshit, I mean things like shops with just random festival junk that’s made of plastic and probably gets destroyed by the end of a day or two. (More or less) everything they bring on is directly relevant to the scene.
We came into the festival area as Dance with the Dead were playing and noted that they were sounding really good—we didn’t know them at all, but this might need to be changed! Music-wise, truly, I wasn’t kidding when I said that there were very few acts I was interested in seeing this year, as the first artist I wanted to check out, genuinely, was Vansidian, who were playing on the small stage while Lost Society were out on the main side of things. I’ve missed all of their club shows (literally!) so far due to conflicting interests, so I was really excited to get the chance to see them finally, and it was even more exciting for it to be at Tuska, which is a big deal! In fact, one can link my whole association with Vansidian to another show at Tuska, which was Frosttide in 2016, after which I got much more into the band and discovered a very young Matti Meri-Huhti some time after as their live guitarist. As such, when Vansidian was founded, I was at the frontlines of hearing their music, so I’m sad to say that I hadn’t gotten the chance to see them perform beforehand. Well, better late than never, at least! Their set was fantastic, they did a great job of the fresh and familiar material from their new debut album, “Reflecting the Shadows,” and Tiivistämö’s Kvlt Stage was pretty packed, so hopefully this show put them even further on the map and gets them some interest from a label!
Of course, everyone wants to support Ukrainian metal act Jinjer for obvious reasons, so the crowd had completely shown up by the time their set started at 18:15. While the band has never been a genre that would have me spinning their albums very often, I will say that I always enjoy seeing them live and it’s been nice to stand on the sidelines and see them grow in popularity from that band that people caught as an opening act that seemed “pretty good” over the years to the tour de force they are now. They’re starting to become a staple of Tuska, as they’ve been booked and performed at the festival since 2019 (of course, they weren’t here during the cancelled pandemic events that never happened). Naturally, they put on a spectacular show with full force and energy, though we were content to sit back and enjoy from a distance.
The next few acts were either too familiar, like Mokoma, or too unfamiliar, like Galvanizer, and I haven’t really put any effort into getting to know Arch Enemy at any given point. Then there was some the drama a few years back regarding photography copyrights that was really poorly handled and didn’t encourage me to give them any more attention than I already had. However, my dear Vincent Parkkonen (you may know him from the band, Sulfuris, or if you follow me or Tuonela, he was a journalist for Musicalypse and nowadays does the rare Vincent Hates Everything article), whom I happened to have met at Tuska some years ago, does enjoy them, so we popped by to catch a few songs. Alissa White-Gluz is very cool and confident on stage, no surprises there, and they did put on a solid show, even if I don’t know them much at all.
We did head over for Glen Hughes, hoping he’d play us some classic Deep Purple, and maybe some other cool material. We saw the current Deep Purple lineup with Ian Gillan last year at the late, terrible Rock in the City Festival and it was a great show, so expectations were high as to what a Glen Hughes show would be like. In short: he delivered magnificently on every front, from wild wailing vocals and slick groovy bass, to an energetic performance with great charisma and showmanship. He commanded the stage for the whole timeslot and was a surprise highlight of the whole festival. I would 100% go see him again if he ever toured through here. Absolutely stellar show, and I’ve never heard “Stormbringer” live before, so that was a real treat all-around.
The first night wrapped up with Gojira, whom everyone seems to love, so it seemed like a good time to give them an honest chance to impress, though I had done more or less the same thing last time they had headlined in 2018, though I still haven’t gotten around to listening to them. Much like before, I appreciated their sound and show, as well as their spectacular lights and stage set-up. I watched from afar, but I still felt like I could get a very good idea of what was happening on stage thanks to the screens and just how big their lighting setup is. There was a cool blast of what seemed to be toilet paper rolls and later some more confetti, making for a solid, dramatic performance. Perhaps someday I will finally get around to listening to them.
That wrapped up the day music-wise. The crowds were friendly and amiable, and there was no shortage of friends to bump into. My food pick of the day was tacos, because the burger and smokery queues are always so long. Seksico Tacos was deeply confusing to me, but I’ve watched a lot of taco documentaries on Netflix lately, so we’ve recently been trying out the handful of authentic taco places in the area to test their quality. I don’t know what Seksico is all about (or, as we would say, Sexico… y’know, like, Mexico? But… sex? Sex-Mexico? Okay, moving on…), or why the tacos are sexy, but they did have a picture of a young Pate Mustajärvi, a melted- or bitten-looking penis, and some lube to fit the theme. We may never know why. But! The tacos were actually quite good, considering the quality you occasionally get at festivals. The beans were a little spicy for me and I don’t generally like beans anyways, but I still enjoyed it for what it was. The chicken and fish, however, were particularly delightful, I only ate them in the wrong order.
Exiting the festival involves big queues, but they move surprisingly fast. The only huge nightmare is if you want to take the metro, because those lines are obscene. There was also a logistical issue during the busy times because no one was controlling traffic, and because the waves of attendees were so long, car traffic wasn’t able to move at times, creating some nasty backups. There were traffic lights in the evening, which was fine, but the daytime traffic was a bit of a problem in the worst arrival times.
Otherwise, everything seemed to be running pretty smoothly by this point! Tuska is known to be a pretty well-oiled machine, so that comes as no surprise. We went home at a reasonable time with no afterparties, because there were two days to go and we aren’t so young anymore!
If you go to www.harempants.com, code “geekbear” gives you a 10% discount; my pants and orange cover are from there
Saturday started out with utterly pouring rain, which promised to ebb off around 15:00ish, but it was coming down pretty hard as we were making our way into town, which is always a little discouraging. However, it’s always nice to have things cool off a little bit after weeks of intense heat, so enduring a couple hours of rain wasn’t the end of the world if it meant a milder afternoon. Getting out of bed and into town in time for a 13:30 show is, of course, a trial of its own (especially now that we live way out in the boonies), but I remembered Orbit Culture sounding pretty good on their album, so it was worthwhile to show up early.
Saturday also promised a little bit more in the way of good bands, as Silver Bullet were among the first-up to play at the nasty hour of 13:30, making it further worthwhile to show up as early as possible. Unfortunately, the morning madness had us running late, so despite our best efforts, we arrived only in time for the last minute or so of “Forever Yours,” despite having sprinted to the stage (giving myself a wee little asthma attack in the process). It was worth it though, Silver Bullet are always a good time and the impressively large crowd seemed to agree that they were worth showing up early for.
At that point, we decided to try and find some friends, but couldn’t get into Tiivistämö because Sipsi had a beer, so instead we waited outside and found a place that was selling… tools. There was a person standing up and calling people over enthusiastically to come check it out, and once she finally roped some people into whatever she was doing, I had to go and ask them if they really sell a lot of tools at a metal festival, to which they responded in a surprising affirmative. Their tools seemed to involve a lot of the classics, with a bit of modernization for convenience, or at least that’s what my cursory glance suggested. They even had a Wacken pack, inspired by what you might need to have handy when camping at a music festival. They sent us on our way with very fancy bottle openers as gifts.
The main stage had Turmion Kätilöt at that point, and they’re a good band to have on in the background at the festival, since they’re so high-energy. We were bumping into some friends here and there, when some fellows showed up with an inflatable dinosaur that they were in the process of finishing blowing up. Event promoter Jouni Markkanen materialized and caught a picture of them. As we were staring at them with fascination as they were blowing up the dinosaur’s legs, they were laughing and we were able to take the first selfie of the day with them. More on what happened to the dinosaur later…
Orbit Culture, as predicted, put on a good show and we were pleased to see some people had gotten away with some crowdsurfing, which is a rare sight in Finland. We left a bit early though, because Sipsi confessed that he’s never seen Brymir before. I’ve also been sighted selling merch for them, and I’ve covered their shows as well, so I’m quite well-acquainted with their live sets enough to say that it would indeed likely be worthwhile to check it out. We got there in time to catch a few speeches and the throwing of this big stuffed hauki [pike fish] into the crowd… who inevitably became stranded on the roof of the stage. Hopefully it got home safe eventually! As for Brymir, well, as I said, I’ve seen them playing a few times, but I can attest that the set at Tuska was an especially good one. The crowd was into it and the energy was really great.
At that point, I decided that it was early enough in the day, with not enough going on, that I’d brave the long queue for Treffi’s bacon and cheese burger, because it had been so good the previous year. Clutch was playing on the main stage, so I was able to enjoy their sound from a distance while I was waiting to get food. Many of my friends who had been up close had said that their crowd had pulled an impressively large number of older folks in. The burger, as expected, was fantastic!
Swallow the Sun and Finntroll were playing at the same time, which meant that attendees could pick bands based on the weather: if it’s raining, the doom and gloom of StS is always the place to be, though if the sun is shining, it’s better to go party with Finntroll. Well, it was admittedly an interesting mix of cloud and light, which seemed like a nice trollish atmosphere. I’ve seen Finntroll several tens of times over the years, yet I’ve never seen them put on a bad show. On this occasion, you know, same as usual… in fact, I’d almost be curious to see what a bad Finntroll show is like, just for the novelty. If there was one flaw to the set, it’s only that the lack of a live keyboardist these days had taken a little bit of the bounce out of the show, since it’s always better to have people playing live, to allow for more freedom to have fun in the moment. That said, they also played “Ylaren,” which was the only song off the new album that I really got into, so that was a definite added bonus.
Shout-out though, as Licia Mapelli (one of the journalists from Tuonela) and I got to meet IRL for the first time, and I was also lucky enough to also make the acquaintance of her husband, Mirko Luparelli, who has taken photos once in a while. If you pay attention to Tuonela at all, you may have caught that they’re big Swallow the Sun fans. Much like me and Sonata Arctica last year, these guys were actually planning to skip StS this time around and try out something different, but popped by, you know, just because… and became so engaged that they couldn’t pull themselves away. So it seems there were lots of good options to see!
Unfortunately, this plethora of good acts also meant that Marko Hietala was playing at the same time as Dirt over on the Kvlt Stage. Last year, the small stage had been a catastrophe, as Tiivistämö was WAY too small for the number of people who wanted to see some of the acts there, leading us to fully miss some of the artists, like Shereign. This year, we hoped to be able to see Dirt, but knew that we’d have to show up early to be able to do so. It wasn’t the stage that prevented this, however, but the fact that we had been chilling near the tent stage before Marko’s set started, and then an obscenely heavy downpour began, so it was pretty easy and safe for us to just hop in there and it was not very tempting to leave. Alas, I have a weird habit of missing Dirt shows that I should really remedy. Hopefully the temperature was not too horrifying in the rain, as Aleksi is known to wear leather pants, which is not always the most comfortable stylistic choice in a sweaty inferno.
There’s a story behind this picture, incidentally: I was sharing a table with a group of Finnish folks who asked if I could take a picture of them in their raincoats. I said that it was no problem, took the photo with the guy’s phone, and then asked, for the hell of it, if he’d take one of me too. He agreed and then proceeded to just hold his own phone up and take a picture of me with it. All of his friends were laughing and shouting at him and then, as you can see, he took one with my phone as well. So if someone you know randomly has a similar photo of me… that’s why!
As you may have clocked, I did see most of the shows that Marko Hietala put on during his tour earlier this year, as I was selling merch for most of the south-central events, so this was very much a similar set, just truncated with only one cover and overall fewer songs. He still chatted amiably with the crowd quite a lot, telling stories, and he did at least one or two of them in English as well, explaining that they were playing the songs in the languages they were originally written in (his solo album was released in both Finnish and English). As per usual, he’s a complete wizard of a vocalist and a delight to watch, so we were in no way sorry to be imprisoned behind a waterfall during his set. Much lake on Friday, a vocalist/bassist was one of the highlights of the day.
In Flames was up on the main stage and I’ve been ignoring them for a good long while because of their long stretch of IMHO relatively terrible albums, but since “Foregone” was actually pretty good, I was kind of looking forward to this set. Vocalist Anders Fridén was in a pleasantly good mood, ever-encouraging the crowd gently to break some rules in order to have fun by crowdsurfing. The setlist was really solid, with some of the best tracks from the new album, as well as a lot of good old hits—surprisingly, “Leeches” from “Come Clarity” and quite a few good pieces off “A Sense of Purpose”—though the clean singing really didn’t work for me during “Only for the Weak.” One of the day’s highlights, however, was when Anders started to ask why the fuck anyone would bring a huge inflatable dinosaur to a metal festival. He proceeded to suggest that someone should ride it, after which the dinosaur was pulled down into the crowd and spat back out with a person indeed riding on it. Needless to say, poor dinosaur did not survive In Flames’ set.
Haken, meanwhile, I’d already seen this year and wasn’t very engaged in their show (prog honestly isn’t the best for metal festivals, it tends to get a bit boring when you need all the energy you can get), so I decided to chill and listen to Butcher Babies instead, since I’ve heard their name going around and didn’t catch their last set at Tuska, which was quite some time ago by now. While I was a bit too far away to see the stage, they sounded energetic and fun, and I should really give them a spin one of these days.
The second day wrapped up with V.V. a.k.a. Ville Valo the solo artist, which I’m sure was a big pull for many, but because I’ve never been fond of HIM—more due to the extreme mania of their fans than a distaste for their music (which is quite fine)—this was worth checking out just for the experience, but otherwise wasn’t of any personal interest. Actually, the main thing I was curious about in this set was if Valo would have more energy with his solo band than he did a few years back when HIM headlined Tuska on their final tour some years back in, I think, 2017. On that occasion, everyone in the band looked bored out of their tree and like they wanted to be anywhere else, so there was some allure to see how enthusiastic the man would be this time around. On that note, it was nice to see that Ville was actually looking really happy to be on stage and sounding fantastic. I had sworn that early on, he had completely butchered a scream during the first song or two, but that may have been a trick of the wind because no one else had noticed it. In fact, everyone was raving about his show at the end of the night and much of the crowd was outright glowing.
[ed: it turns out that a few other people did hear him butcher that wail, but he clearly noticed it and looked embarrassed afterwards; he was on point the rest of the night though]
I had let the big fans go up to watch from closer, but as my back had been hurting all day and an oppressively ominous cloud was rolling in, I stayed in my dry seat from where I had watched In Flames for the first half of their set, and then decided that, on a rainy and cooler, humid day, maybe eating ramen at a festival wasn’t such a ludicrous idea after all. Fat Ramen’s bowl was tasty, with crispy tofu, some thin slices of something pickled (maybe ginger?), and different sprouts and greens. Overall, it definitely hit the spot and I was lucky to get a bowl and some pleasant conversation before they closed up for the night.
We were out really late at an afterparty and I’m notoriously bad at sleeping in, which meant that I was going to have to summon a lot of energy for the next day, but luckily, the bands weren’t starting to perform until 16:00.
The third day had, perhaps, the biggest pulls of them all. Smackbound and Dreamtale were both up early, which meant that we had to show up at the start of the day once more. We bumped into a beloved friend at Redi, so ended up getting a drink before coming in to get into the Kvlt Stage before Dreamtale got too filled up. If you read last month’s recap, you might recall that their guitarist, Zsolt Szilagyi has also been sighted live with Frozen Factory and brought me a lot of joy during that show, so I wanted to check him out in action again—great guitarist, damn! Also, Dreamtale is currently the host of Nitte Valo, who’s one of Finland’s true unsung vocalists. You might remember her as the original singer of Battle Beast, but we hadn’t heard from her in a while before Dreamtale picked her up. On this day, I learned that she can growl as well as wail, how magnificent! This band—which has undergone about a million lineup changes in its lifespan—is one of those entities that seems to exist regardless of who its band members are, solely to keep classic power metal alive. I hope to see a lot more of them in the future.
Electric Callboy was worth heading over to check out, since I wasn’t able to catch their show earlier this year, though everyone said it was a good time. Well, I had to take their word for it yet again, because they were so popular that the tent stage was packed way past its capacity, to the point where I couldn’t even see the inside monitor screens. This led to a bunch of us having a discussion about how there really just shouldn’t be a tent stage at a festival, because this is what happens (much like how the Kvlt Stage in Tiivistämö is arguably too small for gigs). We wondered if the tent could be used, instead to host the food court, since everyone likes a tent when they’re eating to protect from rain, sun, and seagulls (which, frankly, are a bit of a problem at the festival, since it’s on the coast). I recall Rockfest having a tent area for a bar and a table space to just sit and eat food from anywhere at some point, and that had been really nice and well-appreciated. Maybe they could try using the tent for that instead and have another open-air stage?
Well, speaking of food, since I couldn’t see the band I was hoping for, I instead headed to the food court to see what was on the inner courtyard of options that I hadn’t checked out yet. There were a couple of options that appealed to me, but Smoke Meat Every Day from the Sour Dough Pizza Crew both made me laugh and looked tasty. I didn’t like that the pickles tasted like cucumber still, but otherwise it was a pretty tasty pizza and I liked the size and functionality of how it was served—ideal for a festival!
Another of the biggest lures of 2023 was easily The Hu, who were supposed to be opening for Sabaton earlier this year but had to cancel that tour. Everyone who had been hoping to catch them had been very disappointed, so this surely made up for it, as the big open-air area made for great atmosphere. The band had a fantastic overall appearance, with great outfits, gorgeous instruments, and a really fun sound. Their melodies aren’t the most exciting or exotic that you may ever hear, and Vincent admitted to getting bored after a while because it all started to sound the same, but the rest of us found it very fresh and nice—a lot of us really enjoy the droning Tuvan throat singing and very few of us have ever had the opportunity to see it live before. Truly, no wonder they’ve received awards for spreading Mongolian culture around!
It was also nice to get a chance to see Delain with their new lineup; it’s nice to be able to rekindle my familiarity with them, especially since their very solid new album came out this year. Admittedly, I’d lost interest in Delain over the years, after being enthusiastic up to around “Moonbathers,” so it’s been nice to reconnect with their sound and find it revitalized by the (old/)new band members. In particular, we had a hard time coming to terms what an absolute delight Diana Leah was to behold. She was simply everything you could possibly want in a female vocalist: she has a gorgeous voice that suits Delain’s material perfectly, she’s a sweet and charismatic front when she interacts with the crowd, her outfit was extremely stylish without being remotely hypersexualized… everything was just perfect. To add to the great vibes from their show and make it even more of a surprise highlight, local vocalist Paolo Ribaldini showed up as the guest vocalist for some of their older tracks. There was a bit of a missed opportunity in that they didn’t play on the same day as Marko Hietala (who was the original singer in many of them), but—and I do not say this lightly—Paolo absolutely slayed it! He utterly nailed Marko’s wail from “The Gathering” and I was sold from there on out. They also had a fantastic set of new and old material, with a lot of our favorites from both eras included. Please tour here again, for I might actually be lured out of my goblin cave to check them out!
Naturally, the night wrapped up with Ghost, who have been making more and more appearances at Tuska in recent years. Their last headlining show at Tuska in 2016 was a banger, but I left really early to catch Ember Falls at the afterparty (how stupid, really, that they put the afterparty band while the headliner was still playing—I hope they don’t still do that these days). That meant that not only could I stay for the whole show this time, but I would also be able to listen to some new material from their very solid last album while at it! The setlist was absolutely bangin’, with a stellar selection of their new material, as well as some classic favorites from older albums as well. The band’s image has changed a lot since I’ve last seen them, with a new Papa Emeritus IV persona for Tobias Forge, and a ton of new Nameless Ghouls in tow with wild new outfits. The Cardinal’s hat appeared and Papa Nihil on saxophone also showed up at one point. The band have really steered into the theatricality of things nowadays, which makes for a great headlining show and a dramatic finale to a great weekend. As Vincent mentioned at one point, it’s nice to see a heavy metal festival headliner front up on stage in a glittery, sparkly, blue blazer these days and no one bats an eye. They had a 3-track encore and we all had a magnificent final party in the crowd with our biggest collective group of the weekend, which made for a fantastic wrap-up to Sunday night!
And thus wrapped up Tuska 2023…
What can I say? Well, it’s still big AF and I don’t know what can be done about that, but for better or for worse, Tuska Festival is a monster event nowadays. However, they seem to have things pretty well-functioning these days, even if it’s a bit oppressively crowded. The central location of the mainstage allows for these huge crowds but not for great accessibility to cross the festival area if you want to hit up Kattilahalli or most of the food stalls, so there are ups and downs to the layout. The bathrooms were clean and stocked every time I used them, the food selection was really solid all around, the use of space is decent but could still be improved, and everything feels good and relevant to what the attendees might be interested in. Perhaps there could have been a few more special little things around, just to pique curiosity, but generally speaking, there wasn’t much to do besides see shows. A little more foot traffic control would be welcome outside the event during rushes, but even that was a pretty minor hindrance. In the end, we didn’t have a lot to complain about throughout the whole weekend, unless massive price inflation in general is an issue (which is certainly not limited to this event).
It seems to go without saying, but if they’re willing to have me back again in 2024, chances are that I’ll get dragged out once more, and I’ll likely have a great time again too!
