2008 saw the third edition of the Jalometalli Winterfest during the last weekend of March. Like the summer version, the one-day event took place at Club Teatria, and it featured six bands from Finland and Metsatöll from Estonia.
Mors Subita and Sear opened this year’s Winterfest; until Shade Empire’s show, however, a decent number of people had found its way to Teatria. The band, from Kuopio, made itself scarce concerning gigs during the previous year. Now they were back with their third album Zero Nexus and served the audience some of their new melodic black/death metal material, as it could be heard with "Ecstasy Of Black Light." But also songs from Shade Empire’s predecessor album weren’t left out, as for example "Bloodstar" was taken into the setlist as well. I myself hadn’t seen this band before and must say that their performance was convincing, not least because there seemed to be a bunch of people on stage that knew what they were doing despite a long break from playing any live shows, and the music could keep up with it, too.
Before The Dawn, on the other hand, were less convincing in my opinion. What started as a solo project of Tuomas Saukkonen has developed to a progressive/gothic band nowadays. Tuomas emphasises it being his solo band but gathered some musicians around him so that Before The Dawn started touring Finland and Spain. Recently they became confirmed for this year’s Wacken Open Air, the probably biggest metal event in Europe. This seemed to go along with how parts of the audience experienced the gig, at least one of the first moshpits could be observed. Despite all this recent success – Before The Dawn’s show wasn’t amazing and I rather saw to it that I got myself some earplugs from the bar at Teatria as the volume was unendurable throughout the hall without any protection.Something completely different, namely folk metal from Estonia, was offered a bit later.
Metsatöll are one of the leading bands when it comes to combining metal with traditional folk instruments such as a bagpipe and different kinds of flutes. Usually also a kannel, the Estonian version of the Finnish kantele, is involved in the band’s concerts, however, it wasn’t used at the Jalometalli Winterfest. A pity in my opinion, nonetheless good to have a piece of culture, language, mythology and history from one of Finland’s neighbouring countries. Apart from those songs that simply belong to a Metsatöll gig such as "Hundi loomine", "Sõjahunt" and "Saaremaa vägimees" there was also new material such as the title track from their recently released album Iivakivi.
Some more, high-spirited folk metal was provided by Korpiklaani. The forest clan’s use of unusual instruments stretched from a violin and an accordion to a djembe drum, their songs from rather simple drinking songs like "Happy Little Boozer" to tracks about nature, Finnish culture and mythology like the outstanding "Kipumylly" – what all songs had in common, though, were infectious melodies. After all of Korpiklaani’s extensive touring during the last couple of years it might sound surprising that this has been their first gig ever in Oulu. Thus they promised to be back, which without doubt found the audience’s approval.Quite a few people stayed for the last band of the evening.
Impaled Nazarene had been under-fire for their alleged nationalistic orientation especially in Germany (where some of their gigs were cancelled a couple of years ago). How much truth there is in those accusations is probably hard to say… because of the barely or not at all understandable lyrics embedded in their black metal.
The Jalometalli summer festival takes place from 15th to 16th August 2008. Confirmed bands so far are Overkill (USA), Satyricon (Norway), Mayhem (Norway), Trouble (USA), Mortal Sin (Austria), Blitzkrieg (UK), Desaster (Germany), Pantheon I (Norway), Evocation (Sweden), Astral Doors (Sweden), Turisas, KYPCK, Barathrum, Prestige, Sotajumala, Heavy Metal Perse, Kalmah, Catamenia and Adastra.
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2008 saw the third edition of the Jalometalli Winterfest during the last weekend of March. Like the summer version, the one-day event took place at Club Teatria, and it featured six bands from Finland and Metsatöll from Estonia.
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