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| HATE, EPISODE 13 & SOLACIDE ‒ Dante's Highlight, Helsinki ‒ April 2, 2010 |
While I already in good time read about Episode 13 and Solacide's Diseaster Tour, which consisted of a couple Finnish and Russian dates, Hate's appearance as a headliner on just this one Helsinki show wasn't announced until about a week before the event, and promotion was left minimal. Therefore, I didn't have high hopes for the size of the audience, but the inclusion of Hate at least drew me to the church-turned-venue to enjoy some death and black metal on this Good Friday. A fitting setting, huh?  Up first were Lahti's Solacide with their melodic and progressive black metal. With four demos and nearly 15 years behind them, they didn't lack the skill or experience, and especially the mastermind Kimmo's convincing soloing stood out. They did lack the audience, though, and there wasn't so much energy on stage either, apart from some occasional headbanging. The quite complex song material would've also needed a better sound to work as well as it does on record, but at least I enjoyed the couple of songs they played from Pleasure of Existence, which was still released under their previous moniker Dim Moonlight. Included in the set were also Deicide and Impaled Nazarene covers, but maybe from the latter's catalog a more fitting choice than "Total War - Winter War" could have been found, considering the Christian holiday... Their new Turkish vocalist Gökhan's voice was not really special, but possessed the required aggression and suited the material, whereas I didn't get into the lead guitarist's clean vocals that were luckily quite few.
 The somewhat weirdly named Episode 13 was supposedly the first Turkish black metal band to play in Finland, but didn't manage to convince me about the quality of their scene. Despite the band members' Hellhammer and Venom shirt choices, the material wasn't filthy old school mangling, but quite mediocre melodic black metal with some decent riffs here and there. The band having only one guitarist on stage served the sound better, though, as it wasn't as messy as during Solacide. Vocalist Ozan was also going for a more black metal kind of look with some mild corpse paint, and although he possessed a forbidding and intense stage presence, I thought it looked a bit silly with his short hair.
Starting ridiculously late after 1 a.m. was finally one of Poland's many gifts to death metal, Hate. Despite the sad lack of audience, the four-piece performed with the professionalism expected from a band with a 20-year career and extensive touring experience. The hair-twirling was furious, the playing tight and precise, and the sound relatively satisfactory, so I guess their hour-and-a-half-long soundcheck somewhat paid off... Effort had been seemingly put on the visual side, too, with the band wearing quite unconventional-looking corpse paint and stage dresses. I found the look of their long skirts a bit stupid, although the large omega symbol on the bassist's was nifty. Vocalist/guitarist Adam the First Sinner must have forgotten all about the gig they played at Tavastia some years ago with Carpathian Forest and Keep of Kalessin, as he claimed this was their first time playing in Helsinki...  The set list seemed to entirely concentrate on their newer material, which awakes more associations to their fellow countrymen Behemoth instead of the heavily Deicide-influenced sound they had earlier, and particularly well-represented was the latest album Morphosis. Along with crushing pieces like "Threnody" and "Omega", some stuff from Anaclasis and Awakening of the Liar was played, like the absolutely killer hymn "Hex". The slight industrial touches present on the newest albums weren't absent live either, contributing with dark, cold sounds in the background, and reminding me of Australia's The Amenta at times. However, as successfully as things went on stage, the empty venue and the late showtime managed to bring the feeling partially down, since Adam had to constantly keep asking if we were still awake. Hopefully in the future Hate will get another opportunity to showcase their abilites to a properly sized Finnish audience in a better setting, because I don't think they deserved this. ~ Ossi Turpeinen |
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Full photo galleries from this gig:
Hate,
Episode 13 &
Solacide
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