Bear's Monthly Mayhem - June 2023!
Archived from BearWiseman.com
We’re back with a new Monthly Mayhem! As you may have recalled, I took all of May off from seeing any sort of gigs, but June got me out already in the first week because there were two rare acts to be caught on the same day on June 4th at Louhela Jam: Everfrost and The Mosfets. To make things even more fun, we caught Benji Connelly (keyboards/band mastermind) and Jope Salminen (drums) of the former and Keith Mosfet (guitars&vocals/band mastermind) and Ilari Oinonen (bass) of the latter for a bit of a Gathering of Geeks Trivia Showdown, which will be released whenever I get around to it.
Also, before that, we finally headed out to Bodom Bar for the first time on the 2nd to check it out and see the legendary Children of Bodom memorabilia. Oh, also, Vansidian had a pre-listening party for their debut album, so it was a pretty good excuse to head out to Espoo. It was a really nice bar, though I was curious to try their fancy-pants pizza and they told me that they were “out of normal pizza” but didn’t seem to want me to have a vegan pizza either. It also took about five people to pass on this message. I ordered some makkaraperunat [sausage & fries] instead, and then they later came by to tell me they had normal pizza again… if I had know that was a possibility, I wouldn’t have ordered the fries. Well, that was certainly an experience, one way or the other, heh.
We also saw Kiuas again on the 3rd after seeing them as recently as the end of last year. The set wasn’t special per se, apart from it just being awesome to see them, no matter how many times, but they did play a new song, so that’s always a treat (you can hear the currently titled “No More Warrior Soul for You” linked below in a semi-bad-quality YouTube video). Here’s hoping they release this track officially, sooner rather than later!
In other news, I took a week off from the garden so I could go up north with my partner, but ultimately, we both decided that because it was a hot week, and because we have a big garden, four cats (one of whom was on medication), and a lot of stress, that we would rather do a staycation (do I hate that word? I’m not sure yet, but probably) and enjoy our new Kamado grill and Octopath Traveler, which we’re playing together. The former is great, because we love watching cooking shows and we both really appreciate artisanal cooking, while the latter has been especially nice for me because I’m not very tactical and I don’t learn new RPG systems very easily, so having a tactical mastermind playing alongside me is making the game go really smoothly (I’m also really impressed that he’s willing to play a Japanese RPG with me, as he notoriously hates them). Okay, so the story’s pretty ‘90s and has been completely 2-dimensional (1-dimensional even—I’ve legit word-for-word called what they characters are about to say at least twice before they say it) so far, but even that seems to be part of the nostalgia for old RPGs, so we make fun of the characters and story a lot (I mean, for reference, I was writing stories of the same depth and quality when I was 15 years old…), but we’re really loving the game otherwise.
I also had a bit of a shitstorm when I was offered to attend a whopping six (6!) shows/festivals on June 16th: Vansidian was playing in Tampere; Lady Enslain was selling merch for Battle Beast at a venue I’ve never tried before; Frozen Factory (whose singer you may recall was a guest on Gathering of Geeks) were doing a show in a basement bar; Crimson Sun were performing downtown, Nightwish was doing a hometown show in Kitee, and of course, I had free tickets to Tuhdimmat Tahdit. Truly, on Monday the 12th, I had no idea where I’d be that weekend. Tuhdimmat Tahdit had a great selection of bands, but none that I haven’t seen before and I didn’t have company for the festival (which meant I also didn’t want to drive alone to Tampere for Vansidian). Nightwish just hasn’t been the same without Marko Hietala so even though it was a hometown show, I didn’t feel like making the trip (apparently it had a truly awful crowd, so I guess I didn’t miss out). Crimson Sun lost out to Frozen Factory since I haven’t seen the latter live before, but I did wonder if I could catch both them and Battle Beast, just so I could see how the Allas Sea Pool works as a venue.
Ultimately, I decided to try to cram as much as I could into that day as possible. I went to town to buy a used acacia wood kirjoituslipasto [writing dresser]. I can’t begin to explain how desperate I was to get this piece of furniture, as I didn’t know it existed and the fellow selling it was out of town, so I was out of my mind waiting for him to come home so I could come buy it… only to find out the car I borrowed to pick it up was way too small. So I hauled ass into town, borrowed my friend’s car, came back, picked up the dresser, dumped it at my friends’ place (they were kind enough to bring it over the next day), and made it back to town as Battle Beast was playing their first song. The Allas Sea Pool did honestly make for a pretty fun venue and I’d be curious to come back again sometime, and though BB’s set was good, it was also pretty basic—nothing I haven’t seen from them before, same gimmicks as always. I felt pretty bad about not being there to help with merch, admittedly, and then felt worse smokebombed away when a bunch of dudes started asking about charging their phones, because I had misremembered Frozen Factory’s start-time.
So I booked it 3km across town without an inhaler or having eaten anything to get from Katajanokka to Sörnäinen and once again—following a pit-stop to nab a couple of ham and cheese pastries—I arrived as the first song was playing. Frozen Factory put on a really great show though (I always get a bit of a smile when a singer or someone waves at me with recognition, I admit), I was delighted to see them for the first time. Stephen Baker was awesome to watch on stage and his pal Vincent does journalism with me once in a while, so I was doubly pleased to find a friend. Perhaps the best part of the night, however, was when guitarist Zsolt Szilagyi seemed to be having a connection issue with his guitar right before a solo was coming up in the last song. He couldn’t get the cord connected fast enough, so he just grabbed the mic and started singing his solo… truly, I haven’t laughed or smiled that hard at a gig in fuck knows how long, so I was delighted to have had such a good time at their show—definitely an early gig highlight of this year! I feel like I’ve covered so many shows that nothing is very fun for me anymore, but club shows like this, where you get to see all the weird little things that go amazingly or go horrendously… those are the shows that are leaving me with the best memories nowadays! There’s a video of them playing “Solar Windfalls” down at the bottom of this article, that you should totally check out!
The night ended up with Vincent and I going to Populus bar in Kallio and finding the truly worst karaoke system we’ve both ever come across—it involved headsets and no one paying attention to the queue, so the four ladies doing karaoke were just taking everyone else’s abandoned songs. It was messy and awful and involved us waiting for like 2 hours for our turn when there was practically no one in the bar. Woof!
And of course, I got roped into going to Tuska again, but that report will be up next month (here!). I also published the last two Get to Know Classless Act interviews, which were always a delight. I won’t talk about Derek Day’s personal troubles here, but it was nice to get to chat with him and shed a tear over our mutual losses and feel connected and not alone despite our pain, so that’s always lovely. They’re good people and you should absolutely spin their music and watch the interviews!
In other news, I do feel like I’ve been getting a bit better, emotionally, though of course, things come in an ebb and flow. I’ve had a good few weeks before, then crashed again, but the goal is just to keep the good stretches going as long as possible. This current streak has been the better part of a month, but perhaps that’s because I’ve had a few weeks off and I’ve been able to just spend time doing things I enjoy doing. Teamwork is the name of the game in our household and we are doing a good job of it right now, now that we finally realized why our relationship wasn’t working optimally. The biggest issue overall is my unending lack of energy. I’m hoping to get some new alternative antidepressants going for me ASAP and see how things improve from there with time.
Of course, you can also check out my Best of 2023 playlist below, which is ever in flux! Be warned, it’s pretty metalcore-heavy this year, but I blame that for most bands spamming out their albums during or just after the pandemic, so this year’s been pretty slow on the new-releases front. Otherwise, next month might be a bit scant again, save Kosmos Festival, which I’m really looking forward to!
GATHERING OF GEEKS ft. LOST IN GREY (S01E09)
LIVE REPORT: 3.6 Kiuas @ Tavastia
LIVE REPORT: 4.6.2023 Everfrost & The Mosfets @ Louhela Jam
INTERVIEW: Get to Know Classless Act pt. 4 ft. Chuck McKissock
INTERVIEW: Get to Know Classless Act pt. 5 ft. Derek Day
SONG OF THE DAY: Classless Act - Storm Before the Calm ft. Darryl “DMC” McDaniels