20 November 2025, Logomo, Turku, Finland

It’s been quiet when it comes to gigs for us since the summer. The south-west Finland isn’t exactly a hotbed for hard rock / metal gigs, so especially the international acts who visit our country rarely play here. Fortunately some domestic acts do, and this time BATTLE BEAST brought in a Swedish support band DYNAZTY.

We missed the first couple of songs by Dynazty, but thankfully Mira was still allowed to go to the pit for a couple of songs, so we have a decent amount of photos of the band. The band was playing the last bars of  ”Game of Faces” when we made it to the hall, and I was surprised how many people were already there. The usual apathy towards support acts was nowhere to be seen. It seems like Dynazty have a solid fanbase here, or maybe this is a good proof that it’s better to have a support act who is a good match to the main band. I’ve seen quite a few strange pairings…

We’ve seen Dynazty when they were still a rather basic hard rock group, and they’ve come a long way since. With their fourth album ”Renatus” they re-invented themselves and found a more modern sound, with emphasis on bigger hooks. Much like the headliner of the gig, they’re not playing tracks from the early albums anymore. I was kind of hoping for their attempt at Eurovision Song Contest, ”Land Of Broken Dreams”, but knew that the odds were against it.

Dynazty’s slot was fairly long for a support, I think they played almost an hour. The setlist included their recent hits like the aforementioned ”Game Of Faces”, ”Presence Of Mind”, ”Waterfall” and ”The Human Paradox”. Nils Molin, also known as the clean male voice of Amaranthe, impressed with his superb voice and frontmanship. The guitarists Love Magnusson and Mikael Lavér were very entertaining  and skilled too. Being able to play a solo and drink beer at the same time is one thing, but when they do it both simultaneously  is something else! Bassist Jonathan Olsson and drummer Georg Härnsten Egg were lively performers too, so full points for the showmanship for the whole band. The extended singalong during the last song ”Heartless Madness” was probably fun for some, but I would have rather heard another  song instead, they do have an extensive back catalogue of music.

BATTLE BEAST released their long-awaited new album ”Steelbound” last month. The setlist featured a lot of material from it, almost the entire album in fact. Only two songs were left off. Having seen the band quite a few times during the last few years, it was very refreshing to hear this entirely revamped set. Some of the new songs worked better live than on record, especially ”Blood Of Heroes” sounded particularly powerful. ”Angel Of Midnight” and ”Steelbound” have already cemented their place in my personal ”Best Of Battle Beast” playlist, and their live renditions were excellent.

During ”Twilight Cabaret”, vocalist Noora Louhimo told us that she has started a new dance school, ”Mother Beast’s Salsa School”, and showed us some moves. The song does have some salsa vibes, which is quite unheard of in Heavy Metal. The band had enlisted the help of two percussionists to add some latin beats to the ”Cabaret” and they played on several other songs as well.

Apart from being a dance teacher, Noora could also be an inspirational speaker, her positive and empowering attitude leans towards that sort of a thing. A multitalented individual for sure, but I think her strongest asset is still that amazing voice. She has honed her technique to perfection, belting out high notes and screams effortlessly, then singing with a tender, soft voice the next minute. She’s a force of nature!

The setlist did contain several slightly older fan favourites, such as ”Wings Of Light”, ”No More Hollywood Dreams” and ”Bastard Son Of Odin”. It was a real value-for-money set, with almost twenty songs in total. Most of the numbers featured pyrotechnics and the band’s light show was on a new level, so the show was very entertaining both musically and visually.

Review by Kimmo Toivonen
Photos by Mira Suutari-Toivonen

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