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Municipal Waste + Rytmihäiriö (1990 ed.) + Axegressor + Forca Macabra - 12/18/2010 - Nosturi - Helsinki

--- ENGLISH VERSION ---

The winter just gets worse and worse in Finland, so much that it’s not even funny anymore. After making my way through the ice and snow, I was in for a rather tedious wait. The doors didn’t open when they were supposed to, but some fifteen or so minutes later. People were freezing their asses off trying to keep themselves warm, and finish the last of their own drinks as a glacial wind blew from the frozen sea. The relief was huge when they finally started pouring into the venue.

It didn’t take long for the audience to thaw out, since it only took two seconds to Forca Macabra to get the pit going. The band plays pretty fast generic thrash with one small twist; even though the guys are Finnish, the lyrics and song titles are in Portuguese to honor the Brazilian bands that have inspired Forca Macabra. The band is a bit too punk and not thrash enough for my taste, but entertaining enough as a warm-up act.
As usual, there were mostly kids to see the opening act, the bar was empty and calm, while the youngsters were wrecking havoc in the pit. Sadly, the charisma of the band started to diminish right after the first song, and never quite recovered, even though a sudden shredding guitar solo upped the intensity for a while.
The band also gave the crowd-surfers a few covers, the most interesting one being the traditional Brazilian music piece “Metal”. What had started as a proper thrash gig with furious mosh-pits, had somehow turned into what all metal gigs populated by kids nowadays are. The vocalist took the effort to show his disapproval for the circle pits that in his view (shared by most of the older people at the bar) do not belong at a thrash concert. His words were useless, and during the last song the crowd spontaneously launched into a Wall of Death.
Axegressor took the stage and immediately the chants began. The first three songs were of increasing tempos and got the people running around again. Luckily also the more familiar elements of a metal-thrashing-mad gig, crowd-surfing and stage-diving, were present with force.
The awesomely-named vocalist Johnny Nuclear Winter also dissed the circle pitters. He somehow turned his speech into a short stand-up act by introducing a new gig procedure, the “Wall of Life”. The WoL consists of everyone starting at the middle of the floor and then running hard into the surrounding walls. The old farts at the bar got a good laugh, but the kids showed a remarkable lack of either understanding or a sense of irony, and launched into yet another Wall of Death.
Axegressor played surprisingly many completely new songs from the upcoming second album, due sometime next spring. One of them, called “Iron Cross Fire”, sounded really promising; otherwise the new songs didn’t leave any kind of impression. They also played a Terveet Kädet (Finnish hardcore band) track called “Täystuho”. Surprisingly enough the band finished with a new song, and decided not to play their only proper hit so far, “Luoti Päähän”. All in all, the set was at times boring, but at its best really good and solid fun. Mostly the old saying “the faster the better” was true yet again.
This was no ordinary gig for Rytmihäiriö, since they were celebrating their 20th year in the gutter. This is why the band wasn’t performing with their usual line-up, but instead with the one they had in 1990. They also only played songs from that era. Nosturi was already almost full, and the crowd was really enjoying the fast, furious and short songs on offer. The sounds were somehow worse than for any of the other bands, but it really didn’t make the gig any worse, almost the opposite, punk on!
The set was maybe slightly too long and got a bit monotonous, even if the featuring second vocalist, the current singer Une, near the end did liven up the mood. It was a special evening for the band, but I would still have kept it punk, and under maybe 20 minutes.
Well before the final act took the stage, the sold-out venue was echoing with chants: “Municipal Waste is going to fuck you up!” When the band finally started playing, the crowd went ballistic. The pits were furious and the crowd-surfing constant, and there was also an unbroken chain of stage-divers lining up next to the stage. I don’t know whether it’s the fact that Municipal Waste is American, or that there’s a generational gap, but the band actually requested huge circle pits every now and then, which was funny considering the repulse they caused with the previous bands.
This was the first time I saw them live, and I have to admit that they blew me away. The intensity of the show and the crowd were just incredible. The way people were climbing the walls, bouncing to the music as one and just going “ape-shit-crazy”... it truly was a Show with a capital “S”! The band also kept it interesting, with a bass solo and inviting all the girls in the crowd on stage to mosh to a song and then stage-dive as a row.
MW gave it their all, and the same can be said for the audience. The documentary maker they had with them to capture the essence of their live charisma must have been pleased. If classical thrash is in any way close to your heart, I strongly urge you to catch Municipal Waste live, since they are definitely an awesome live band. And they ARE going to fuck you up!


--- VERSIONE ITALIANA ---

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