The fine tuning and trimming of the new Nightwish album has ended at last. Holopainen, Kinnunen and Karmila got all the tracks of the forthcoming Imaginaerum mixed and several test masterings were done during summertime. There are no words to tell what kind of a musical firework the album will be. After the previous record I pointed out to the band that it will be a mission impossible to outreach the perfect Dark Passion Play album – how wrong was I. It’s a pity how long all the fans have to wait to hear and feel the same that I have. And I’m not making the case any easier by flattering and praising Imaginaerum to be the best of its kind because it will be something no one has ever done before. Personally I hope the longest possible career to Nightwish because every member of the band has the unique honesty, down-to-earth mentality and frankness. They have deserved all the glory they have got!
In the end of May we had a listening session at Finnvox together with the band (without Anette), Karmila, Kinnunen and Stobe Harju & Petri Alanko working on the movie score. Tuomas brought some champagne and I took care of some salty and sweet snacks. After stunning and dead-dropping experience we headed off to a tight and exciting bowling match Nightwish against technicians. Using some irregular and violative arrangements in their team Nightwish won the competition. Unfortunately the anti-doping committee was not visiting on their track. Post mortem of the bowl game were forgotten during Lappish dinner in the centre of Helsinki, only without the guitar hobbit whose diet included only liquid nourishment.
In the end of June it was time to our ostensibly cultural group Heavy cult to join together again. We made a two-day trip to old town Porvoo having a theme of following the footsteps of the legendary Finnish painter Albert Edelfelt, and trying to amuse our local host to death. This time it was metal golds Holopainen, Kakko, Karmila, Hynynen, Sinkkonen, Aaltonen and myself trying to make the best at that attempt. It was meant to end the tour in the town museums, but the early morning beer buying adventure and visiting in a local liqueur store took so long that we had to skip the mouldy junk in a vitrine and move straight to the sauna, dinner and warm hospitality of CMX’s Aki Yrjänä.
One of the highlights of this summer was a photo shooting gig in Sonisphere, Helsinki. Live Nation Finland asked me to capture the bands, crowd and overall feelings from the festival. I took Niku as my assistant and with “access all areas” passes we cruised smoothly in backstage, on stages and all around the festival area. Atmosphere in the backstage was relaxed and almost all bands were social and hanging out due to a sweltering warm day. I asked the In Flames’ guys one trivia question: What is the thing that connects In Flames and Finnvox Studios? And the answer is… They have bought an old SSL mixing console from Finnvox to their own studio in Gothenburg. Due to hectic schedule and three different venues I couldn’t photograph all the bands, but some cool photos are coming at least of Stam1na, Hammerfall, Sonata Arctica and In Flames. I first have to read carefully the photography agreement I made of Slipknot before I dare to upload any of those photos here.
Tuska festival was exceptionally held in the middle of July because Sonisphere overpowered the weekend Tuska was formerly held. The festival was also moved from Kaisaniemi park to Suvilahti, which is a region planned for amusement and festivals and has much more space than Kaisaniemi park. I have used to have fun in Tuska and move around without my camera so there’s no photos of any bands from there. It was even weird to look Amorphis playing and I was not in front row behind my lens. Anyway I got the opportunity to shoot Amorphis at Himos festival in mid summer. Himos is one of the biggest events in the most important festival time in Finland.
15th of August was On The Beach festival in the centre of Helsinki. Live Nation Finland asked me again to capture bands and the feeling in this festival held in Hietalahti beach. Despite the rainy and grey weather the photos became quite aesthetic, the atmosphere in the festival was fine and the whole event was really well organized. Again with “AAA”-passes we checked all the acts from the stage with Niku. The lead performer of the festival was teenagedivamadonnawannabedramaqueenofbarbados Rihanna, who turned up her nose to Finnish audience by performing over an hour belatedly without any reason, and forbade all photographing closer than 100 meters! After complaining the cold and rainy weather of Helsinki she performed outside late in the evening wearing only underwear! When watching earlier the soundcheck of Rihanna’s band I noticed familiar looking guitarist on stage playing extremely skilfully and amusing his band mates. Nuno Bettencourt was the guitarist of the 90’s super hit band Extreme. To Niku the highlight of the day was meeting the Pendulum guys and having a chat with these really polite gentlemen in their private backstage.
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