LIVE REPORT: One Morning Left, Blind Channel, & Machinae Supremacy
Nosturi, Helsinki; May 27th, 2017
This article was originally written for Musicalypse.net
With a fresh new release, “Into the Night World,” under their belt, Machinae Supremacy, have been on a spring tour this year, taking them from Kuopio to Tampere, Joensuu, and finally Nosturi in Helsinki on May 27th, 2017. Support acts were baffling this time, with metalcore party-bois One Morning Left joining them on tour, while this specific show also had Blind Channel on the roster as well. It was certainly an eclectic selection.
Check out the full gallery at Tuonela Magazine and read the On the Record interview with Robert Stjärnström here!
Photos by Janne “Jamo” Puronen
One Morning Left was first up at 20.30. The venue setup was once again a bit baffling, as it had been split to allow minors, though they were really only given a few meters of space outside the bar fence. This small space was already packed with people, namely the group of young girls that are fixtures at any Blind Channel show these days, while the bar side was essentially barren with probably less than twenty people present.
The chiptune intro track was probably the reason OML were paired with MaSu (a bit of a flimsy connection if you ask me, but then again, MaSu has always been a hard band to find suitable openers for). There’s an act that rather baffles me stylistically, though I admit that they have the odd banger in their discography. The show was action-packed to be sure, and they know how to play, but the music is so chaotically oversaturated with itself that there’s no room to breath within any one given song most of the time. While their material, on the whole, isn’t the most well-known to me, they do seem to have tightened the screws and made some stylistic choices about the kind of music they’re playing that’s benefited their sound. The newer material is not quite so overstuffed as their older songs.
This show’s weirdness-du-jour was having three dancing ladies from the latest season of Finland’s Temptation Island on stage with water guns. Unfortunately, the sound quality between Mika “Miksu” Lahti’s mic and that of Leevi Luoto (guitars/vocals) was pretty unbalanced, meaning the latter rather stole the stage from their front. It was a pretty solid show, if you’re into that sort of thing, at least.
Then came Blind Channel, whose shows I’ve been following for a year or so now. Their short career has nevertheless been one that’s been on a steady upcurve, as they’ve already played at Wacken Open Air after winning the Metal Battle contest. Last year’s debut release, “Revolutions,” allowed them to tour both within and without Finland as well, so they’re certainly making a name for themselves.
Their set started at 21.20, with the band coming on stage dressed in all-white and they immediately began blasting away with their ludicrously fun material for a good 45 minutes. Honestly, the worst part of the set was the obnoxiously loud screaming (to be clear, not cheering, screaming) of the aforementioned fangirls.
Surprisingly, per what I’m used to from these guys, Blind Channel had some difficult getting the audience to warm up to them. Their energy is top-notch and their sound isn’t so far off from the other two acts that it should have had such an effect, but the audience was being more Finnish than normal. Perhaps it’s the disregard for the traditional metal conventions of yore that makes metalheads sour, especially with Niko Moilanen up there rapping at times. Yet it’s hard to deny that they do great work with covers like “Don’t” by Ed Sheeran or “Can’t Hold Us” by Macklemore—you’d never know they were covers if you don’t know the originals (and if you’re a trve kvlt metalhead, let’s face it, you probably don’t), but it speaks volumes that their music was on par with that of some pretty big-name popstars. They did get the audience engaged enough to squat and jump up for “Alone Against All,” so at least they seemed to win people over by the end. Honestly, I’d still recommend people check out their shows though—it’s very entertaining.
When 22.30 rolled around and the stage had changed over, the curtains scooted aside and Machinae Supremacy came out hot with “My Dragons Will Decimate” and “Into the Night World,” both fresh off the new album. Right after that, the band pulled a surprise by playing “Player One” from their commercial debut, “Deus Ex Machinae,” which is a very popular older fan-favorite.
MaSu are one of those bands who could get away with playing literally any song from their discography and no one would complain, because their fans tend to either love the old stuff or love everything, underground all-stars that they are. While the modern audience would probably be salty at the loss of the big hits from “A View from the End of the World” and “Rise of a Digital Nation,” I, for one, don’t really mind what they play, because everything’s a banger, and the more variety that I get to experience in their live shows over time, the better (because let’s face it, one does not simply not go to MaSu shows when the opportunity arises). Those two releases do provide a lot of the bones of their sets with hits like “Force Feedback,” “Laser Speed Force,” and “Republic of Gamers” being almost staples these days, while “Phantom Shadow” was rather underrepresented with only “Renegades.” Of course, being an album-release tour, they had to include some more new tracks, like “Twe27ySeven” and “The Last March of the Undead”—both excellent live tracks—and the former even brought the band’s recurring Norwegian guest vocalist Ingeborg Ekeland for a guest appearance! If there is one song that they can’t skip, it’s “Indiscriminate Murder Is Counterproductive.” It’s basically a party anthem here at this point in time.
“Rocket Dragon” and “Dark City” were interesting picks for the encore this time around, before their de facto last track and perhaps-best-known radio hit, “Through the Looking Glass” off 2006’s “Redeemer,” which brought Ingeborg Ekeland back once more. It was one of those closers that left you really wanting more, what with the great selection of songs and just how straight-up awesome they sounded. Mix-master Mika Tyni was at his best and Robert Stjärnström had both top-notch volume and vocal sound—he was pitch-perfect all night long. The only notable unusualness was that Tomi Luoma is now rocking a clean-shaven pate, which was entertaining because a fellow journalist at the show was quite certain that he saw him during Blind Channel’s set on the side of the stage headbanging, hair on.
If you’re looking for perhaps the most important band when it comes to internet culture and bringing gamers and geeks closer together, Machinae Supremacy is that band. Be it the free music distribution online, their encouragement for fans to share their music with each other, or the fact that their old releases are still freely available on their website, these guys clearly care more about people having access to their music than becoming rich and famous, which is extremely admirable in this day and age. Beyond that, their sound and style remains as unique and fresh now as it did when they first got started, and easily holds up (if not surpasses) the music made by far bigger and more famous metal bands. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see myself skipping any of their shows or tours anytime soon!
Setlist
My Dragons Will Decimate
Into the Night World
Player One
Force Feedback
Laser Speed Force
Republic of Gamers
Truth of Tomorrow
Indiscriminate Murder is Counterproductive
Renegades
Nova Prospekt
Twe27ySeven
Rise of a Digital Nation
The Last March of the Undead
Encore
Rocket Dragon
Dark City
Through the Looking Glass
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