Bear's Monthly Mayhem - July 2024!

You're still here - thanks!

Aug 06, 2024

Summer is now well underway, perhaps even edging closer to being over! Thanks again for checking out my Monthly Mayhem newsletter! I appreciate you!

If you’re a new subscriber, I hope you enjoy this monthly write-up of my most recent reviews, projects, services, and merch gigs, as well as a general catch-up (and a cat picture or two)! The purple links will take you directly to the articles!

LIVE REPORTS

The very first thing is from July, of course, the live report of Tuska Festival, which took place at the end of June. The festival has certainly changed over the years and evolved into a new beast, so it was interesting to delve into the old-school metal world and ponder on the nature of event growth.

Then there was Kosmos Festival, which is my very favorite festival and general place to be! This was my first year getting press accreditation, so that was exciting for me. While I didn’t ascend to an existence beyond space and time this year, unfortunately, I did still have an amazing time and I’ve met a lot of wonderful artists and performers via that festival. I hope they’ll have me back again next year! I know a few of my photographer friends would love to come out for a night as well, so it’d be cool to get some better photos next year.

Vortex Stage, Kosmos Festival

My last event of the month was to go see Happoradio at Tavastia. I haven’t seen them since around 2012, so I was really interested to come check them out again after such a long, long time. It was a brilliant show, they played a lot of their best material, and I was especially pleased because I hadn’t realized that Kesämiehet were a brass ensemble that was backing them up — really good show and thanks to Pat Zenteno for joining me to take photos!

MUSIC REVIEWS

Once again, I wasn’t reviewing a lot July, but I did do an anniversary review of Helloween’s “Master of the Rings,” which is now in my long list of Helloween reviews over at Tuonela Magazine. Maybe I will someday conquer their whole discography!

I also received the new album from Buko Shane, whom I discovered at Love Potion Psych Fest last year — “Pandemic Blues” is exactly the kind of album I’d send to my dad, having a lot of foundations coming from American folk, country, and blues.

NON-MUSIC REVIEWS

The first and only non-music review of July was me finally getting around to writing up some thoughts about the Mörk Borg TTRPG system, seeing as its one of our favorite games. Next on that list are Troika and Zweihänder, so there’s still more incoming on that front eventually.

PROJECTS

I’ll be getting back to work on Aphrodite Rising in August, which means the big twist is coming up and I’m excited to get there. I think it’s in the very next chapter that I’m set to edit!

I’m also helping out with a rather ambitious music video project for an artist that goes by Mysterykah, who as I understand is a saxophonist/dancer/make-up artist — this is a really big project and I’m learning a lot just by proxy of involvement, so I’m happy to be participating. I’ll be hosting the interviews, taking behind the scenes footage, and generally lending a hand wherever I can.

ISLANDS OF NIGHTSEA

Islands of Nightsea remains on hiatus, though I have some ideas that are getting more and more prominent in my mind. Let’s see where the next months lead me.

OFF THE RECORD

My Rabbit Cult interview was rescheduled for July, so that will be coming out sooner rather than later. I also had a fun interview with Mikko Salovaara of Kiuas that I had planned to release before Dark River Festival (where they are playing), but we encountered a technical hiccup and his audio didn’t record for the second half of the interview, so we need to reschedule the interview to wrap it up. Hopefully we’ll do that before or during DRF.

I still have interviews with Ayreon/Plan Nine and Today Was Yesterday pending, but I’m waiting for the audio to be returned to me before they can get published, unfortunately.

GATHERING OF GEEKS

Nothing new on this front for July, nor do I have anything planned, but that can always change if I feel inspiration to reach out to someone (or if someone reaches out to me).

ENSLAIN METAL MERCH

I did a road trip up north to Nivala with Battle Beast, since both Lady Enslain and her partner were unable to attend. That was really fun — they’re really nice folks and they took good care of me, and they’re really fun performers so it’s never a bad time to be at a Battle Beast show. I also learned that smaller festivals like this one don’t always have a merch team, which means the bands have to bring their own sellers. It was an interesting experience and a fun little smalltown “city festival” where I got to see Gladenfold for the first time; shout-out to their merch guy who was helping me out (and the band apparently, by substituting for their bassist) for no reason other than he’s just a nice person.

We were also contacted for a last-minute event for another artist that I’ve never heard of named Paolo Nutini. Not to be confused by his Italian heritage, this Scottish artist seems to be hugely popular and the people at the show were so excited. It seems that it was his first time in Finland, so not only were the Finns over the moon, but a lot of people who had mixed Scottish heritage or who were outright from somewhere in the UK had come to see his show and a lot of them came to chat with me at merch, which was actually really nice. I only had posters to sell, which made my job very easy, and the music was pretty fun — there were definitely a couple bangin’ tracks in there that had me dancing a little behind my table.

GENERAL BEARSNESS

I spent the first few days of July just recovering from Tuska, though I do tend to wake up very early, so my morning herbalism continued (which is fine, morning is the best time to harvest, so it’s a good thing). I’m really excited to have found a shelf that’s perfect for hosting my herb jars.

When I first looked at my calendar, I was very pleased to see that I had essentially nothing booked for the month except Kosmos Festival, which meant that there would be an opportunity to actually have a break and take it easy. Summer is a busy time, both around the house and socially, since we had so many visitors and did so much work in May and June, so I was glad to get a bit more rest in July, even if the festivals were crazy — it took me half a week to get on my feet again after Kosmos.

After finally finishing Breath by James Nestor, I decided that my health routines should include breathing practice. I find this fascinating, as my ADHD tendencies have always made things like mindfulness very difficult, but if I sit down with a 20 minute timer and just count my breath and pay attention to it, the time flies by. It’s made these meditative processes quite a lot easier and true to the book, since I’ve started to focus more on breath, I have noticed my ADHD symptoms have lessened quite a bit. This could also be related to my decreased screen time and increased mental leniency towards myself as well though, but I’m sure all of it helps.

My osteopath said he finally understands why I benefited so much from the NUCCA treatments I had in Canada back in 2020, as apparently my occipital lobe likes to lock up (you may recall that that was what was giving me spinal spasms earlier in the summer). Now, while I am still very unbalanced in general, with my bones sliding all over the place inside me, I do feel like my physical condition is improving and I’ve made the decision to join some classes and workshops in the coming months. I met the most amazing artist around Kosmos Festival named Safa Solati who is doing a whirling lifedance workshop at the end of August, and then I’ll be joining Nanette Jasmine’s oriental dance classes in the fall, because first of all, belly dance is wonderful, but also because I think it will help to strengthen my core and keep my pelvis balanced, which is a constant issue still.

It’s worth saying that part of the reason I’ve neglected my physical health has been because I realized that trying to fix my mental health and physical health at the same time is like trying to eat a mountain. That said, I’ve done wonders on my mental health this year and I’m feeling a lot better and my depressive breakdowns have been quite few and far between lately. I’ve been so inspired by all of the Kosmos Circus artists that it occurred to me that it might be time to start working on my physical shape once more. So I’ve added some simple stretch and strengthening to my daily routine as much as possible and I’m already seeing a lot of improvement.

There were several fun game nights this month — one game of In the Hall of the Mountain King replaced our Mörk Borg session that was canceled because one player got the day wrong; one was a friend’s regular gaming get-together at Oodi in Helsinki; and one was Arkham Horror with a friend who’s currently living in Oulu but comes to Helsinki regularly for work.

In the Hall of the Mountain King; Nekojima

One other fun thing from this month was that I realized that the kids I used to Au Pair for must all be close to 18 years old now, which honestly blew my mind a little bit because they were all 2-3 years old when I moved here. So, I figured I’d look on Instagram to see if I could find them and sure enough, there were the little girls I used to take care of, all grown up and barely recognizable. We’ve tentatively decided to meet up sometime when we can, since they don’t live particularly far away from me. It would be fun to catch up and see what life has been like for them in the last 15 years.

And, of course, I’ve been arranging and rearranging my house because I sold my old desk finally and found someone willing to deliver a new shelf to me, so my addiction to acacia furniture is only worsening, but I’m thrilled. My office shelf’s twin moved in with its sibling and the new one is now in the guest room.

“Life is better when you live it like you’re the main character. So long as you remember that everybody else is the main character of their own life as well. Because life isn’t about obsessing over your own story — it’s about choosing how your story intertwines with that of others.”

— Kyle “The Captain” Creek

Share Bear Wiseman's Monthly Mayhem

Coming Next Month…

I’ve started listening to the self-titled debut from Smalltime Players, for which I’ll release a review next month, but suffice to say it’s a delightful “dad rock” album (country, folk, blues) that you should definitely not miss!

I also played a few games this month, like West of Loathing and Donut Land, so you can expect reviews of those games coming up in the future. They were both extremely silly.

And of course, Nightwish’s press days are coming up in the beginning of August, so you can expect an interview with Tuomas Holopainen coming early next month as well!

I’ll likely be doing small writeups on the fan meetup, as well as Dark River Festival, where I’ll be working with Enslain again. On the merch front, I’ve also got a show up in Jyväskylä with Battle Beast and Merta, so chances are, I’ll write about that show too.

August is honestly looking extremely chaotic for me, especially with a friend visiting for a week or two, so chances are that I’ll have quite a few stories to tell!

Thanks again for reading along this month!

And below is my Best of 2024 playlist! Welcome to follow along!

Bear's Book of Balance