Loud & Metal Attack 2014 – Gig Report

It was Finnish heavy metal time again in Japan. Finland Fest sponsors the “Loud & Metal Attack” mini-festival with Finnish metal bands for a couple of years already. Here is last year’s report.

The menu this year was: Jupiter (there is always one Japanese opening act, this year it was this band), The Blanko, Arion, Stam1na, Von Hertzen Brothers, and my favorite band amorphis.

The opening act of Jupiter was so-so in my humble opinion. They sounded like they were stuck in the 90ties when it was the peak time of visual rock with iconic bands like X Japan, Luna Sea and so forth, when their style was fresh and new. Credit shall be given to Jupiter for their elaborate costumes in which they must have been sweating like hell, but sound-wise it was all “heard it before” and better in the 90ties.

Then an unexpected highlight. The opening act of the Finnish bands, a power-trio called The Blanko was pretty cool. It’s one of the bands that’s centered around one member, the vocalist and guitarist Pauli, who is one hell of a beast. In his early twenties I suppose, stylish (American Indian kinda), ribbed aps, playing his guitar with his teeth at times, good voice, smashing riffs and a hell of a presence on stage. I was sitting in the back but walked up to the front after their first song, which is a good sign I bought the only CD of theirs that was available at the festival (in fact they released only two so far) and shall listen into it during the coming week. Very promising band in my opinion with lots of potential.

The next band was not my cup of tea, a formation called Arion with the opposite of a singer compared to Pauli from The Blanko. The dude looked like a Backstreet Boy trying to play metal, had no idea what to do with himself on stage and sound wise it sounded to me like heard it all before and nothing special. Sorry to the fans of that band, but after two, three songs I took a break, had an early dinner at the only food booth available and prepped for Stam1na.

Now Stam1na is worth watching! The singer, Hyrde, said they are around for 18 years now and they love their metal. I’ve never seen such vicious and fast three-man-sync circle headbanging in my life! They are clearly a “live” band, fun, know how to fire up the audience and caused the only mosh-pit of the little festival. Would have liked to have some more songs from them.

This is one thing about the Loud & Metal Attack, the individual acts are awfully short. Just half an hour. Since it was over at 20:45 or something, they could easily give each band 45 minutes, hm…

Anyway, if you get the chance to see Stam1na live, watch them – great fun and a mix of trash, speed and death metal with mostly Finnish vocals by the way.

Next up was Von Hertzen Brothers who delivered a solid performance and who were very touched by the enthusiasm of the Japanese fans. The vocalist was thanking those fans who “have been writing to us every month for the past 6 and a half years to come back to Japan” (they’ve been here apparently once 7 years ago). Well, yes, that’s dedication! At the end of the gig the singer, Mikko, was coming down from the stage and handed out flowers to the first row and someone got his sweaty t-shirt as well!

Main act of the day was “my” amorphis. I’ve seen them now a couple of times in Europe and also in Japan and man, do they like Japan The service of the organizers is Japanese = excellent and they just love the dedication and enthusiasm and positiveness of the Japanese crowd, which results in them having real fun with the gig as well, which then results in awesome performances. In one word amorphis was divine and that was the best and craziest and most awesome performance of the more than 20 year old song Vulgar Necrolatry that I’ve seen so far, wow! Awesome show with a very happy and genki amorphis.

Hope to see you again in Japan soon!