Text: André, pics & videos: Aidan

You can do many wonderful things on a Sunday: Watch Netflix with your partner, let your parents spoil you with culinary delights or take a long walk in the forest. But you can also arrange to meet your favourite post-millennial to enjoy the finest Finnish black metal in Oberhausen.

I did the latter, together with Aidan – and the trip to the Helvete should be worth it. At this point, Ansgar from From Beyond Events deserves a lot of praise, as he managed to bring Havukruunu to the Ruhrpott. You definitely don’t see this quartet every day in our area, although in my opinion there is hardly a black metal band at the moment that can hold a candle to the gentlemen from the far north in terms of epicness and sublimity.

Fortunately, the band succeeded in bringing the intense atmosphere that characterises their releases to the stage. I was already fascinated after a few moments and would have liked to watch the spectacle for much longer than an hour. Recalling the wild headbanging activities of my colleague Aidan, it was obviously the same for the entire Epic Metal Blog staff!

As expected, the focus of the gig was on singer and guitarist Stefan, who is an impressive apparition – not least because of his cool black cape, with which he visually stood out a bit from his band colleagues, who did without any fancy frippery and simply played passionately. Yes, black metal can also be damn down-to-earth!

By the way, I would like to take a bow to Kostajainen: It’s always pretty hot in the Helvete – and hardly any musician doesn’t break a sweat there. What the Havukruunu drummer delivered despite the temperatures was truly impressive – 60 minutes of full throttle at the highest level. When I imagine that he had played in Vienna the night before and that he would be back in Paris less than 24 hours later, it makes me all dizzy…

The setlist left nothing to be desired, as it offered some numbers from the last, fantastic full-length Uinuos syömein sota, but at the same time also adequately incorporated the other, consistently strong releases of the Finns. The realisation that the guys also turned out to be very likeable contemporaries rounded off the evening very nicely. The only minus point: Havukruunu had far too little merch with them – I don’t know what the reason was, but the money I would have liked to spend went back to Dortmund. At least Aidan snatched one of the tour T-shirts…