Most of the time now, my trips are meticulosuly planned right down to the second whenever I go to a show overseas. My most recent trip to Finland was no exception; I was going to be attending the Turmion Kätilöt album launch show at the Ice Hall in Helsinki, and I was also really stoked to be seeing Lord Of The Lost because their new album had really blown me away.
I was, however, sulking that I couldn’t go to the Vorna show in Espoo, the next town over. It didn’t feel right that I was in Finland and missing a Vorna show, but the timings were too tight travelling between the two locations and would have resulted in me getting to the Ice Hall venue at 20:47 when LOTL were starting at 20:45, and I didn’t want to miss any of their set because of how much I adored the new album. My reasoning was that whilst Vorna are undoubtably the better band, I had a better chance of seeing them again this year than LOTL. But then LOTL threw a curveball – on the day of the Ice Hall show, they announced they weren’t playing any new songs there. And that really pissed me off. Why should I miss one of my favourite bands to see them, when they weren’t even going to play the songs I wanted to hear?
Fuck it.
And that was how, a few hours later, I found myself on a metro to Espoo in order to see Vorna’s set at 19:00 before hotfooting it back to the capital for the show I’d actually planned to attend.
I feel like an idiot, and angry at myself for almost missing this show, because this was one of the best performances I’ve seen Vorna give. To say it was worth the hassle of me running round like an idiot and giving myself a horrible adrenaline spike was an understatement.
The set consisted almost entirely of songs from their latest album, Sateet palata saavat, but that wasn’t a bad thing. It’s interesting how playing the songs in a different order to the album can change the vibe and mood, with the flow from one track to the next being absolutely perfect. Virvatulet served well as an opener, setting the scene beautifully with an extended introduction, but one of the highlights for me was Syvyydet – the sheer emotion and colour to that track’s rendition absolutely blew me away.
The other major highlight of the set was when Vorna played a brand new song. That alone was worth the travel hassle and stress, before taking anything else into account! In true Vorna style, it’s different to the songs from each of their previous full-length albums and is perhaps their most melodic track to date. My appetite for new Vorna music has officially been whet, and I am very eager to hear the rest of what they’ve been cooking up for the new album.
To summarise, I couldn’t have been happier with my life choices for January 14th. A seriously incredible bonus gig from one of my favourite bands, and I even got to hear some brand new material!! Talk about an incredible start to an evening that was only about to get even better…
