[ SMUGGLERROK 2023, August 4.-5., Lieto, Finland ]
Smugglerrok (yes, without a “c”) was held for the ninth time this year in Lieto, a small town near Turku, Strangely enough, this was our first time at the festival, the previous dates have clashed with our other adventures. This year we were able to make it, and I’m quite happy we did. A ROCK festival within 20 minutes from home, and some of our favourite band performing? Yes please!
The projected ticket sales for the festival were 3000-4000 per day, and at least on the second day I think the goal was reached. The festival is practically in the middle of the town, so there’s a limit to how big it can grow. As it is, Smugglerrok is a cosy festival and I hope it stays like this in the future. I was quite surprised that there was free parking available all around the area and the there were no traffic jams whatsoever when we left.
Although profiled as a rock/metal festival, I noticed that there were a lot of "regular people", not your usual denim & leather type of rock fans. The festival was clearly THE event of the town, a social gathering that everyone wanted to be a part of, regardless of their musical preferences. Hopefully a few of those were converted into rock fans!
On Friday, the first act we saw was RASKASTA ISKELMÄÄ. It’s basically a “summer edition” of Raskasta Joulua (“Heavy Christmas”), but instead of christmas songs, Erkka Korhonen and the band led by him breathed metallic new life into classic Finnish “schlagers”. The project has released one album which didn’t do much for me, but damn, do these songs work live!
On the album there are several vocalists, but at this concert the lead vocal duties were shared by only three singers. It didn’t matter, when you’ve got Marco Hietala, Antti Railio and JP Leppäluoto on stage the vocals are going to be nothing short of exceptional.
If you’re a Finn, around my age, born in the seventies or thereabouts, you might have been traumatized by an overexposure to these songs growing up. With heavy metal arrangements these songs were at their best pretty damn excellent.
The band seemed to have fun, and so did the audience. Almost every song turned into a singalong session, because let’s face it, every Finn knows the songs they played.
There were a couple of internationally known songs included, namely “Tsingis Khan” which is a Finnish-language version of 1979 German Eurovision song “Dschinghis Khan”, “Sua Vain” originally “Hello” by Lionel Richie and “Kesäkatu”, “Summer In The City” by the Lovin’ Spoonful. All good fun and very entertaining. Extra mention for the “80’s movie rock” arrangement of “Ajetaan Me Tandemilla”.
Between the bands on the main stage, there were cover bands performing on the small stage. On Friday a band called LUUVITONEN played four sets of Finnish Rock covers, mostly from the bands Yö, Klamydia and Popeda. They were rather good, and I especially liked their well-played Yö covers. The band’s lead singer Vince was also the MC of the festival.
I had very little expectations for LOST SOCIETY. We’ve seen them once live, back in 2014 (South Park Festival), when they had released their first album. That gig was a uncontrollable burst of energy, vintage thrash metal mayhem. The band has apparently evolved into something quite different, and I liked it!
The band hasn’t entirely abandoned their thrash roots but they have added a lot of modern rock/metal elements to their sound. They’ve got some strong hooks and melodies these days, and vocalist Samy Elbanna is singing with a clean voice. “TrueMetalOnly” brigade, shut up with the “sellout” chants there!
Elbanna is indeed the most “transformed” member of the band, back in 2014 he didn’t stand out as the “frontman”. In 2023 he’s a bonafide STAR with capital letters. He took the stage dressed in striking glittery, electric blue outfit and instantly owned the place. Having toured the world and shared the stages with some of the biggest bands out there, he has clearly learned from the masters how to engage the audience. Although the crowd at Smugglerrok wasn’t all metalheads, there were enough of those to create circle pits and walls of death.
The other three guys (Arttu Lesonen - guitar, Mirko Lehtinen - Bass and Taz Fagerström - drums) allowed their star to shine but impressed with their musical skills.
Now looking back, it seems that most of my favourite songs of the set were from the band’s latest album “If The Sky Came Down” - “Awake”, “112”, “What I Have Done”. Good stuff, they were the surprise band of the weekend for me.
The headliner of Friday was STRATOVARIUS. Having seen the band just recently at Rockfest and quite a few times before, we knew what to expect - solid, professional, no-frills melodic metal show.
The band looked and sounded the same as always, and their setlist was pretty identical to that one at Rockfest, maybe some of the songs had switched places. I might be repeating myself but I’ll say it anyway - the songs from the new album worked okay live, as did the classic hits, but… with Stratovarius, for me the “wow-moments” are missing these days, and I don’t know what they could do to create those. Then again, the crowd seemed to enjoy the show and that’s what matters, not some grumpy old git who has seen them too many times.
On Saturday we arrived to the festival just as MAIJA VILKKUMAA was finishing her set. She had really put some effort into the production, there were background singers/dancers on platforms and colourful stage elements, like a modernized version of a 60’s TV show or something. I’m not a huge fan of hers but she does have a handful of catchy songs.
The first band we saw from the start was POPEDA. They are a legendary Finnish rock band, founded in 1977. They’ve now announced that their last gig ever will take place in September, so we saw one of their last performances (only 6 to go after Smugglerrok). Well, we will see whether it’s really The End, rock bands are notoriously unreliable when it comes to final tours and that sort of things.
The band had an hour to play, and that hour was filled almost entirely of the biggest hits. They used the Finnish National Anthem as their intro, which is suitable for an iconic Finnish band, not for everyone. To fill their sound, Popeda was joined by a 3-part horn section. For some of the songs the horns were okay, but at times I felt they were unnecessary and made the songs sound kind of messy.
Vocalist Pate Mustajärvi was in excellent shape, sounding and looking good. The father/son duo of guitarist Costello and bassist Alex Hautamäki is something rarely seen, the only one that I can come up without googling is Eddie and Wolfgang of Van Halen. Anyway, they provided solid backing vocals too, this is a band that doesn’t have to rely on tapes. On drums they’ve got a real powerhouse of a man, Lacu Lahtinen, and long-time keyboard player Patu Kivinen added some nice touches to the band’s classic rock sound.
Apart from a “4711”, a fairly unknown album track sung by Costello, all of the songs were radio staples and major hits. “Kuuma Kesä”, “Kakskytä Centtiä”, “Kersantti Karoliina” and “Ukkometso” (originally from Pate’s solo album) and others got a great reception, and why not - they’re the kind of songs that just about every Finn has heard.
While we enjoyed the Popeda show, the next two acts were the ones which we were most looking forward to. First of them was BEAST IN BLACK.
Beast In Black’s rise to the A-league of metal has been quite fast, they’ve only released 3 albums but are already on a headliner level all over the world. Their curious mixture of power metal and eurodance synths is obviously a working concept.
The stage set for BIB looked awesome, like futuristic city view with two female torsos in big tubes… yeah, sounds kind of weird. With plenty of pyros the show was definitely the most visual of the festival so far. And it wasn’t just the stage set and the pyros, the band had rehearsed quite a few cool synchronized moves for our entertainment.
Vocalist Yannis came across like a metal priest dressed in black. He preached to us believers but I think he might have saved a few lost souls along the way too. Immaculate vocals as usual, although I did detect some hoarseness here and there.
The band played a good selection of songs, a few from each album. The big rock radio hits “Sweet True Lies”, “Die By The Blade”and “Blind And Frozen” were clear fan favourites, but there were really no breathers in set, it was just one massive chorus after another. A funny moment was when two guys in front of me realized that the solo in “Sweet True Lies” sounded familiar - “that’s the melody from that Popeda song we just heard!”. Indeed it is. Those things happen…
The headliner, the last act and the only foreign band of the festival was AMARANTHE. These Swedes are known as crossover pioneers, combining melodic death metal, pop, industrial… a bit of everything.
They had played at Wacken the previous day, in front of 50000 people or something like that. They were probably still riding on that energy, because we got a fantastic show from them too, even though there were merely a few thousand of us in the crowd. The setlist was exactly the same, 14 songs and about an hour.
The visuality was taken even further with Amaranthe, they spared no expenses on pyros and with three singers in the frontline they could create rather impressive looking hair windmills. The musical father of the band, Olaf Mörck, looked like a wizard in his long coat and platinum blonde hair, also a striking figure.
There’s been a line-up change in the band since we last saw them back in 2019, Mikael Sehlin is the band’s latest (and third) “growler”. Dynazty vocalist Nils Molin has been in the band since 2017 and the leading lady Elize Ryd is the only original singer.
The songs then… 4 from the latest album “Manifest” (2020), 3 from the debut and 1 or 2 from each 4 albums released in between. The latest single “Damnation Flame” was played too, along with announcement that there’s a new album “The Catalyst” to be released in February 2024. My personal favourites were “Amaranthine”, “Fearless” and “The Nexus”, to name a few.
Our first Smugglerrok was a fine experience, and I think it won’t be our last. Everything went smoothly and we were treated well. It’s nice to see that a rock festival can succeed without compromising too much. There are so many festivals in Finland where the only “rock” is in the name…
Review by Kimmo Toivonen
Photos by Mira Suutari-Toivonen
Luuvitonen photo by Kimmo Toivonen
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