Finally a review that doesn’t take me ages to write it down, yay. Last night we went to Essen to see Finntroll, who have been one of my favourite bands since I was around 13 or 14 years old. And since I don’t have any photos to edit this time and I have a short break between my work right now, I can take the time to write this little concert review.
The venue
This was my second concert at Turock in Essen, so I basically knew what was ahead. Turock is located in the city centre of Essen, almost right next to the club Don’t Panic where I’ve seen Our Mirage, Oceans and Maelføy earlier this year. So basically the situation of parking and public transport is very similar: It’s easy to reach from Essen main station, there’s an underground station called Viehofer Platz around the corner and there’s some paid parking garage around. If you know the area you might know where to park your car for free.
The club is for about 700 people, so it’s basically a chill atmosphere. Men’s toilets are just around the corner from the entrance, women’s toilets are up the stairs and there’s a cloak room also right after the entrance. We didn’t use it though because spring weather returned on time for this show and we didn’t have any coats to get rid of.
The merch table is at the back of the concert room, next to the bar. Prices for soft drinks are okay, I paid 3,50€ for 0.4 l of Coke and there’s no Pfand on the cups. There’s a balcony that looked quite small and there’s no gap between crowd and stage.
I can’t say much about accessibility. Everything in the club is on ground level, but I don’t remember if there were any small steps or if the doors were wide enough for wheelchairs. The only thing I remember from the last show I’ve been to at Turock is that there is no designated wheelchair area, they just expect people to make room for wheelies. I think staff will make sure that wheelchair users get a spot right in front of the stage – but remembering last night, since there is no seperate area for wheelchair users, I can only recommend bringing someone who is strong enough to protect you from a moshpit. Because based on last night, I can’t see how „unsecured wheelie in front of the crowd“ and „moshing metal crowd“ go together.
Suotana
The opening act were Suotana from Rovaniemi in Finland. And hell, they were great. While watching them perform I thought for a moment that at this point you could practically put any Finnish Melodic Death Metal band on a stage in front of me and I’ll love them. Their music is Melodic Death mixed with influences of Black and Power Metal and it sounds very epic. A few times I couldn’t stop myself from staring at the guitarists hands, as they had some great riffs. Amazing band. Although they were mostly unknown to the crowd, the audience responded very well to them and I personally will definitely make sure to watch them again.
They had a set of thirty minutes and while the setlist (Lake Ounas – Through the Mammoth Valley – The Ancient – Into the Ice – Embrace – River Ounas) looks quite short, some of their songs were incredibly long. Last night when I checked their Instagram after the show I was very pleased to find a post announcing that they’ll play at Summer Breeze this year and I’ve added them to my list of bands I want to see there. Big recommendation!
Metsatöll
I admit when I read the name I assumed this was another Finnish band, but throughout the evening it turned out they were Estonian. I am very sorry for my misconception, but linguistically the differences between Estonian and Finnish are not very visible at first glance. Anyway, Metsatöll are an Estonian Folk Metal band that uses a lot of folklore instruments, some of which I just couldn’t identify. That was kinda cool and unique to their sound. Also their songs are in Estonian.
Unfortunately, though, I couldn’t enjoy their one hour set half as much as I would’ve liked to because I spent the entire 60 minutes with my head lowered and my eyes shut tightly because of the stroboscopic lights they used that were more or less right on eye level with the audience. And honestly, that was super disturbing for me personally, especially because there was an over-excessive use of those lights at the end of several songs, where the lights just kept flashing for about 10 seconds straight. I neither have issues with migraines, nor do I suffer from epilepsy, my only problem is that my eyes are very damn sensitive to light and that was straight-up torture.
Everyone else seemed to have a great time though, but I just hoped for it to be over soon because I was definitely not willing to give up my front row spot before Finntroll hit the stage only because the stroboscopic light was burning holes into my retina. To be fair, Finntroll used the same lamps during their set, they also had flickering lights, but they were neither used as excessively, nor in as much of a triggering way.
Musically, they were okay for me. I love Folk Metal to the deepest bottom of my heart, but they didn’t quite catch me, but maybe that was because I was honestly suffering from my own stubbornness and my unwillingness to leave the front row. I don’t think I’d go watch them again. Not even with shades.
Finntroll
First of all I need to say that I am so damn sad I don’t have any photos of Finntroll. They’re somewhere far at the top of the list of bands I’d like to photograph one day. Last time I’ve seen them I had my camera settings wrong and instead of saving RAW files I ended up with a bunch of jpgs I could trash because I couldn’t edit them to an extent that would satisfy me. This time I didn’t get a photo pass and so I decided to not even bring along my point and shoot camera because I initially hadn’t even intended to stand far at the front (but then nobody got into the front row and since I’m small I decided to fuck it and go for it if nobody else wanted the spot…). Anyway, my last experience with photos at Turock wasn’t the best either, which was another reason why I left the camera at home. So … unfortunately no Finntroll photos.
Very sad though, because their performances are aesthetically pleasing a) because of the troll ears and make up and the overall looks of band and stage and b) Vreth’s fuming microphone stand. But at the same time … there was no photo pit and I saw the other photographers struggle with the mosh pit, so…
Now performance. I forgot to check the watch to see for how long they played, but since Metsatöll already played for an hour as Special Guest, I’d like to assume that it was longer than 60 minutes. They started with an intro, followed by Människopesten. Right at the first song it turned out that I have wronged the Matrix in Bochum in the past when I thought it was their problem that Vreth’s vocals were hardly audible. I want to apologize to Matrix: It’s not your fault, it’s his microphone. He’s clearly audible while speaking between the songs, but I think the effect they put on his mic when he starts singing is what distorts the sound so much that he’s in fact barely audible.
The sound of anyone else was great. So good that in fact I rather heard the snapping of the bass strings instead of the actual notes played by Tundra. The guitar sound was crisp and clear and I had a fun time watching Skrymer’s fingers while the sound of his guitar was so distinct and outstanding that I could follow every single note. Nice.
The setlist was kinda surprising with Solsagan already being the second song in their set. Also Jaktens Tid was missing, which was a highly demanded song by parts of the crowd (and one lady in particular – I wasn’t too sad when she finally shut up after Vreth announced they were not going to play the songs she was screaming for between every. single. song.) To my very personal disappointment, their album Ur Jordens Djup was once again a little underrepresented, but you can’t have everything.
Other than that, their setlist was amazing, as you can see in the photo, and the moshpits were intense. And in between, there were a few … I can’t even describe it … musical „ice-breakers“ maybe that absolutely didn’t fit in there and made the entire show a little more fun.
Also, this was the last show of the tour and traditionally, there’s fun stuff happening at last shows, so during one song towards the end of the set, the members of Suotana (and maybe also Metsatöll, I don’t remember exactly) stormed on stage wearing hilarious rubber troll noses for a short party moment. I’ve mentioned it before, but this is one of the reasons why I love attending final shows of the tour. You never know what kind of mayhem is going to happen.
And now I have a new addition to my slowly growing collection of weird things I collected at concerts: a troll nose.
Also a short word on merch: Besides absolutely beautiful t-shirts (all Finntroll artworks are drawn by Skrymer himself), Finntroll also sold troll ears, patches, drumsticks, painted and signed drumheads (you’re assuming correctly – designed by Skrymer) and, occasionally, some more art by Skrymer. So their merch is worth a visit (and I now own another drumhead, which I can put on the wall with the original Vredesvävd artwork I own and the original drawing of a tattoo I got from Skrymer – I can basically put up my own Skrymer shrine). The prices for shirts and stuff were absolutely okay (30€ each t-shirt) and this time their shirts were Gildan ones – at the last tour I was highly disappointed to find out it was Fruit of the Loom. So basically you can’t do much wrong.