Second week of Festival Summer. This time it was Myötätuulirock in Vantaa, actually the municipal I live in. So no need to travel too much, this was also supposed to be only photography festival… Buut, during the week I got a phone call that the guys and girl of Ensiferum would need some help, so naturally I ended up helping them. So my friday started getting the backline and people of Ensiferum horde from their rehearsal place to the festival site. We arrived quite early, since you couldn’t build the backline yet, so time to get something to eat. The food was amazing! But the only drawback was that the only drink you could get free with the meal was coffee?!? I mean no water, no juice, no milk. You’d have to pay to get those kind of drinks from the food area, ofcourse near the stage and at the backstage booth there were free drinks… oh man, so I ate quickly and went to get some water.

After Viikate ended and got their stuff from the stage, Ensiferum could build their drums on the riser, so while they were building stuff I went to take pictures of Tarot which was the next band, good pics, good show, but this time nothing too special. After them it was time for Ensiferum, it’s always great to see them, this time they had also to backing vocal guests. The set ended up with Battle Hymn, the legendary Manowar piece. And I must tell you, it was greeeaat! This old power metal / Manowar fanboy was just amazed. Awesome. After that, we quickly loaded the gear back into the van. Then it was time for Exodus, I was suprised how good they were, I saw them couple of years ago, but wasn’t too impressed. Too bad I couldn’t see the whole gig since we had to take the gear back to the rehearsal place, since the band had a early leaving to France the next morning.

The rest of the weekend was more “free” for me, so on Saturday I arrived just in time to see Kiuas play. Solid set, always amusing speaks, but I prefer club gigs. After them it started to rain, so I tried to protect my camera, actually I didn’t care too much about Diablo or Mokoma so no harm done, but missing Korpiklaani wasn’t that great, bugger. The rain calmed down a bit, so I went and tried to shoot Swallow the Sun, few good shots but the rain was getting on the lens and I was scared if it would get inside the body too, so I decided to leave the area since there wasn’t anything to do. On my way I got the information from the Turisas fellows that during their show there would be some pyros…. I actually went home, for almost four hours since it was raining like hell and I wasn’t too keen on the next few bands. Luckily I came back to see the Turisas show, since it was really, really good! Actually when I arrived to the area I went to find the pyro guy since you can’t always go infront of the stage to take photos during pyros. But it turned out that I knew the pyro dude and he gave me a grand tour of the pyros on stage so I would know where they were and what would happen. I even almost ended up doing the the pyros, he asked me if I knew the songs I was well yeah, kinda. Goody this button does this and this that, go for it! It was an interesting opportunity, but it would mean no pyro photos, so I made a deal, if the security doesn’t let me shoot the pyros I’ll do them, but they allowed me infront of the stage, so no pyromaniacy this time.

Sunday didn’t offer that much, I just came there to shoot Amorphis, the announcer Jone Nikula seemed pissed of or he was piss drunk, enyway he shouted some bullshit on the stage for sometime and after that Amorphis, took the photos, met couple friends and left home. Too bad this year the rain kinda screwed things up since there wasn’t too many places to take cover and maybe a second stage wouldn’t hurt, so the waiting times between bands wouldn’t be so long.

See photos HERE