It has been two years since Sentenced – probably the best known heavy metal band in the Oulu area - called it a quits and buried their members during a final ‘Funeral Gig’ at Club Teatria, which was neatly adapted to the band’s concept of dealing with ends in general and suicide in particular.

Lately, however, there have been some signs from beyond. Drummer Vesa Ranta opened a bar (Psk Kaupunni on Uusikatu) with a couple of other people, and also guitarist and main lyrics writer Sami Lopakka has reappeared. He recently founded a clothing company with two other people, producing its own clothing series as well as offering a channel for bands, magazines and festivals to have merchandise produced.

‘Northern Tribe’ has been around for almost a year now. The planning process, however, took about the same amount of time, according to Lopakka.

“We noticed that there's a need for this kind of company - a company to serve the needs of the rock/metal subcultures. Me and my partners, the Mertanen brothers Miku and Petri, have all been involved in the metal scene since we were kids, so it was quite easy to turn our ideas into a company. We planned everything very thoroughly, and it took almost a year with all preparation.”

Oulu Subculture

On 1st December 2006 the whole project was launched, which now designs clothing for the needs of rock/metal-based subcultures.

Three different clothing series have been designed so far: Metallion Hardware, Legion of Doom and a series named after the company itself, Northern Tribe. Metallion Hardware is designed for the metal music genre, Legion Of Doom includes all army/camouflage type of clothing - partly made with authentic military specifications - and the Northern Tribe series is “based on cultural history and on the idea of reflecting our roots in the clothing”, as Lopakka explains.

“Before we launch a new series we always give it a lot of thought, in other words we seek for a good reason for a new series. With the Northern Tribe series, having rock art, runes and ancient imagery just works perfectly together.” The print used in most hoodies from this series shows a detail of rock art found in Alta, Norway, and the image on the back is a detail of a Saami Shaman’s drum. The prevailing colours of the clothes are black and charcoal.
A new series is on its way as well and will be introduced in the winter/spring time. It will be called ‘Citizen of Sodom’ and based on famous Hell-paintings and controversial art.

Heavy Metal Festivals

Apart from their own clothing series, Northern Tribe also produces merchandise for festivals and bands. According to Lopakka especially bands seem to be in the need of this kind of services. The company produced merchandise for Poisonblack, Deathchain and Eternal Tears Of Sorrow for instance, as well as for a couple of festivals like Jalometalli and Nummirock.

During the past summer the group stopped by a fair bit of those events all over Finland, representing Northern Tribe with a tent selling their products. Lopakka isn’t sure how successfully this has promoted the company. 

 “It's quite hard to say but it must have helped, we were on so many of the Finnish festivals last summer. We did ten festivals, and on each of them thousands of people must have at least walked by our tent. Festivals are both sales and promotion events for us, and we plan to keep up with the scenario next summer as well.”

Up to this point most of the orders come from Finland. However, Northern Tribe wants to start focussing on exporting their clothing world-wide in the coming years. The web-store has been working internationally from the very beginning so that orders from all over the world were received in the office located a few kilometres below the Arctic Circle.

‘Office Shop’

Right now Northern Tribe has its office in the centre of Oulu on Kauppurienkatu. Mainly it serves as the place where orders are taken and products shipped but it’s also possible to have a look to the clothes there.

“We don't have a specific plan for a real shop at this point. We are away from Oulu quite a bit especially in the festival season, and that makes having a shop a bit tricky. But actually we have recently turned our office into an "office shop", and anyone can walk in whenever they want to, check out the stuff, try it on and buy it with several different payment methods. We are in the very centre of Oulu, so it was quite easy and natural to add that element in

Please keep the topic of messages relevant to the subject of the article.
Name:
Title:
Comment:
	MathGuard security question: 7 + 2 =