Finntroll – loud, louder, hope you brought your earplugs

Born in the 70s, the music genre metal has been growing in many different subgenres such as black, death, power, pagan or progressive metal and for those of you who are not fans, won’t necessarily know the difference. Neither did I till now. It was their first time playing in Australia and my first time being at a heavy metal concert. Finland’s extreme metal and folk band Finntroll played their third out of only four gigs presented by Soundworks Touring at Billboard TheVenue on March 25 and I was in the crowd.
So far, I’ve only connected Lordi as being one of the most famous metal bands coming from Finland. I remember watching them on TV win the Eurovision Song Contest in 2006. They were dressed up as zombies and monsters and were real scary looking. As well as Lordi, Finntroll’s band members were dressed up with black make up and trollish outfits which seems to be the thing they do when you’re a metal band. As many other metal bands from Scandinavia, Finntroll is only one out of many which combine black metal, death metal, folk metal and some kind of their countries folk music together.
If you have ever been to a concert you know that it’s usually a sing along or at least a try to sing along. I have been to many concerts but never to one like Finntrolls. If you’ve ever been to a metal concert you know what I am talking about. As per usual, the main band does not come on stage until at least two former bands have played for a couple of hours. And usually the main band picks bands which have similar taste in music. So as I was anxious to see what the bands were liked, I was shocked when I listened to the first song. Was this even a song? I really can’t tell you because there was no such thing as sing along or pretending to sing along.  I did not understand a word, and neither would you have.  Finntroll sing all their songs in Swedish since their first singer, Katla, thought it would fit better to the ‘trollish’ outfits. But honestly, you won’t understand it anyways which isn’t always a bad thing. There was no pressure of not singing along and getting the text right as it is mostly the case during other concerts. It was so relaxing just to stand there, listen to whatever they were trying to sing and enjoy the melodic metal sounds.

I made sure I brought my earplugs, wearing black clothes and my leather jacket since I didn’t wanna stick out of the crowd. I got proved wrong cause many of Finntroll’s fans were dressed up in extraordinary dresses and costumes and some even dressed up in wolf or sheep coats. If you’re not used to this kind of concert crowd, you might get a bit scared but in the end they’re all really friendly people.
Finntroll’s songs were melodic and had this special something about them, combining Finnish folk music and metal tunes. Being my first ever metal concert, I was happily surprised and enjoyed watching the band performing their show on stage. The rest of the audience must have enjoyed it too because all I could see in the first 6 rows were heads banging along the songs, and big applause afterwards. All in all, being my first ever metal concert, I’ve enjoyed it very much. The atmosphere was dark but friendly, the billboard a good venue, the audience intoxicating and the music melodic and nothing I’ve ever heard before. Truly unique, quiet an experience and I am sure to not make this be my last metal concert.
If you would like to check out Finntroll’s upcoming tours or other metal bands, go to their homepage here or for other metal bands see soundworkstouring.com.

This review has also been published at my mates blog here. Thanks Viktor!