HIM @ The Wiltern & signing session @ Hot Topic, April 23rd

One of the highlights of BogFires’ trip to LA was seeing HIM, Finland’s most successful band in the U.S., perform here at the sold out Wiltern theatre with Dommin and The Fallen opening. HIM had a signing session at Hot Topic on Hollywood and Highland mall earlier that day. Coincidentaly the ASCAP EXPO 2010 was held the same day at the Renaissance Hotel nex door and many of the music industry people got to witness the massive following HIM has here in the U.S. A purchase of a HIM- CD or t-shirt and the Hot Topic- card was required in order to get a wristband that entitled you to meet the band. You could only get one item signed and no photos were allowed. Later that afternoon Hot topic had sold out all their HIM CD’s and t-shirts. The line outside Hot Topic started forming early on and by mid-afternoon it was already on Highland Avenue. I joined the line at 4 PM, when the band arrived, and the line was already on Hollywood Blv by then. Accoring to Hot Topic personnel, only the cast of Twilight was able to atrract more people there recently. Most of the people I spoke with in the line didn’t have tickets to the sold out show. After waiting in the line for 2 h and 30 min I finally got to meet the band and have my t-shirt signed. The guys seemed to be in a good mood, and they were joking around in Finnish. The signing session must have lasted at least three hours all together.

The doors at Wiltern opened at 6.30 PM and before HIM started their set at 9.50 PM the opening bands Dommin and the Fallen performed. The front of the stage was packed even before Dommin started their set. BogFires already catched Dommin live twice when they toured with HIM in Europe. According to Roadrunner Records, touring with HIM has been both pleasant and rewarding for Dommin, who are doing a headlining minitour across U.S. on their way from NYC, where HIM finishes their tour on May 9th. The Fallen is another interesting group, playing melodic hard rock/light metal, with the 2008 american idol finalist Carly Smithson as the front figure vocalist and former members of Evanessence in the band. Good shows from both of the opening bands and the audience loved them. Both of the bands had an 80’s cover song in ther setlist, Dommin with Cutting Crew’s I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight and The Fallen performing Madonna’s Like a Prayer.

By the time HIM started the athmosphere at the venue was sublime. The band did not dissapoint their loyal fans this time either and it was yet another perfect night for the HIM fans. Setlist was similar to the setlist on the European tour, with few additions, as Killing Loneliness from the Dark Light album and Bleed Well from Venus Doom were also performed. HIM has some major celebrity fans here in LA who have helped the bands journey in achieving the massive following they have here. The most significant of course being Bam Margera, who was spotted at the show with his wife Missy. Another big fan of the band is of course Kat Von D who advertised the show at her tattoo shop in West Hollywood.

Photos from the show available at

http://www.heartagram.com/tour/2010/04/23

Another live review available at

http://www.artistdirect.com/entertainment-news/article/live-review-him-the-wiltern-los-angeles/6749222

BogFires would like thank HIM & Seppo Vesterinen for the collaboration.

Project Metal Nation

Check this out! A very cool and ambitious project, spreading the word of Finnish Metal in a novel and creative way:
http://www.projectmetalnation.com/

Conference report: Musexpo 2010 / April 25-28 2010 / Los Angeles

by Toni-Matti Karjalainen

Musexpo is an annual music industry event in West Hollywood, organized this year for the 6th time at the exquisite London West Hollywood hotel. The conference gathers together an impressive line-up of industry people (music industry executives, managers, label reps, marketing experts, game industry people, etc.) in the format of interactive panel discussions and key-note presentations. The expo, in addition to the annual sister event in London, is probably the best place to get an overview of the industry development and valuable insight shared by the industry leaders. Moreover, the atmosphere is extremely relaxed and inspiriting.

Even though the event is characterized by talks and more talks about the industry logic and trends, the music itself is really put to the forefront. Not only are music presentations included in the lunch pauses and between sessions but also is the tonal and visual pleasure offered by a number of showcase presentations by artists and bands from all over the world, taking place during the four evenings at the Viper Room and Whisky a Go Go. Also this year, the first but certainly not the last one for me, I met a bunch of open-minded people and managed to do lots of networking in the London hotel and nearby conference venues. This year’s event hosted some 30 artists from 14 countries and delegates from three dozen countries on five continents.

The origins of Musexpo, as explained by the organizers, stem from the roots of the A&R Network networking dinners in Los Angeles. These exclusive dinners were organized by A&R Network and A&R Worldwide architect Sat Bisla with the purpose of bringing together friends and like-minded relationships from the global radio, A&R, film/TV music supervision, publishing, new media and artist management communities to engage in creative dialogue and establish fresh business relationships. It was the positive culmination of these organic networking dinners that spawned the creation of the four-day event, still successfully hosted by Mr. Bisla himself.

The conference program started with a keynote panel, moderated by Nic Harcourt, a highly acknowledged music writer in the Los Angeles Times Magazine. The panel, one of the interesting ones in the event, consisted an impressive lineup of industry leading executives: David Glick (Edge, UK), George Ergatoudis (Head of Music, BBC Radio 1), Harvey Goldsmith (Harvey Goldsmith Presents), Jim Urie (Universal Music Group Distribution), Steve Schnur (EA Games), and Jim Hollingsworth (Gracenote). Impressing and interesting was also the Global Managers Forum that followed. From this discussion, we received insights from highly experienced music managers such as Jeff Jampol (e.g. The Doors), Jonathan Shalit (e.g. N-Dubz), Rob McDermott (e.g. Linkin Park), David “Beno” Benveniste (e.g. System of A Down, Alice In Chains), Robert Reynolds (e.g. The Killers), and Ted Chung (e.g. Snoop Dogg). After the nice lunch, served by Gordon Ramsay Restaurant at the top terrace of the London hotel, discussions continued with focus on music publishing and marketing.

The 2nd morning of the event, following the also interesting Global A&R Forum with the focus on the future of artist development, was highlighted by the interview (by Kevin Wall) of the industry’s living legend Harvey Goldsmith. He is really a person who has personally experienced the development of rock music industry from its early years to the present time. His stories with the likes of Led Zeppelin, Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteed, to name a few, as well as organization of the Massive Live Aid and Live 8 concerts were truly fascinating to listen. During the following lunch break, Mr. Goldsmith was also acknowledged with an “International Music Person of the Year” award. As a personal note, it was quite nice to shake hands with this English gentleman.

Tuesday afternoon then consisted of more discussion panels on the topics of “connecting the virtual and reality worlds”, “music for the masses”, and “the future of music”. The tight morning of the last Musexpo day was packed – perhaps a bit too packed in fact – with discussions stressing the sponsorship issues in the “music in visual media & consumer brands” panel, insights on the selection of music in films and TV by the Chop Shop corporation, experiences about music and gaming by the EA music team, as well as examples of music integration ant the NBC Universal TV.

In overall, despite inspiriting talks about creativity and future possibilities in the music industry, a slight flavor of cynicism colored many discussions. And despite several reminders of the importance of “good” music in the core of all actions, Musexpo really stressed the business aspects and, at times, music itself and its integrity were left at the background. Which is of course understandable – this is a music industry event anyway. Nevertheless, the current focus on building super stars, mass market attention, and global recognition could be shifted onto other kind of realities as well. Super stardom becomes reality for a very few; there are thousands and thousands of artists with a smaller but often loyal fan base, perhaps a local one, which often is a good ground for a sustainable and long-term career. There are possibilities to make a satisfactory living out of music without breaking big time. And it might be more relevant for many participants to get ideas of how to build, nurture and manage such success stories cases through different media than to listen to per se amusing stories of star building. New distribution methods and technologies were also embraced with too little self-criticism. Social media, stream applications and new gadgets are yet cool, of course, but guess what, there are still genres and countries in which consistent albums, tangible CD’s with rich visual contents still make a big difference for the true music fans.


Altogether some thirty bands and artists played in the showcase evenings. I was able to check the most of them on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. There were many interesting presentations by very talented musicians – not many of them particularly targeted to my personal taste, but interesting indeed – as well as some less distinctive ones. In addition to the memorable shows by Sissy Wish, Laleh, Dúné, Ingrid Olava, The Boy Who Trapped The Sun, and others, I was personally moved by two presentations: The Australian Birds of Tokyo in the Whisky on Monday and Danish Mads Langer in the Viper Room on Wednesday. A specific impact was made by the Birds singer Ian Kenny who I was very surprised to see playing this band as well. Only few weeks ago was I knocked by his charisma as his better known band Karnivool played a killer show in Helsinki. It was also a pleasure to meet this nice guy personally after the show. All in all, I felt an additional rush of emotions during the gigs, particularly in the Whisky a Go Go, by the fact that many of my 70’s through 90’s heroes had really performed in this very place.

Home sweet home, for now, and certainly back to Musexpo L.A. next year.

http://www.musexpo.net/musexpoLA10/
http://musexpo.wordpress.com/

Finns conquered the Sunset Strip: Sonata Arctica (April 24), and Swallow the Sun, Moonsorrow & Finntroll (April 25) at the House of Blues

Prior to the Musexpo 2010 in West Hollywood, BogFires had a chance to see a bundle of Finnish metal export hopes at the House of Blues. Both of the caravans, one with Sonata Arctica onboard, and another one comprising Finntroll, Moonsorrow and Swallow the Sun, had already done a number of US cities on their tour bills before hitting the Hollywood hills.

Thanks to the Volcano in Island, my post-ash trip to the U.S. became realized few days later than planned, which meant that I did not even except to catch the Sonata show in time. But surprisingly, against all the odds, the master of the air handed out an extra reward and my flight touched down at the LAX airport over one hour ahead of schedule. Perfect! A quick cab to Santa Monica Blvd, check-in to the Ramada hotel, and hop hop to HoB. Sonata was playing “Juliet” when I entered the venue, so half of the songs were still left in the set list. Unfortunately, I missed the opening acts Powerglove and Mutiny Within. The later is one tha I would have especially liked to see, as their recently published debut album is kind of a nice piece of technical metal, visibly acknowledged also by the Prog metal authority Mike Portnoy.

Sonata did a great show that was more reduced in terms of gear and visuals than for instance the three previous shows I have witnessed in Helsinki, Gothenburg and Tokyo. This was because of the lighter backline and smaller size of the venue in which audience gets quite close to the band. Although Tony Kakko and the rest of the band are able to create an intimate and positive atmosphere in any place, at the House of Blues the show was even more down-to-earth, even in terms of the sounds. And the crowd, perhaps a few hundred heads, enjoyed it as well. After the show, we had a good time with these jovial guys from the dark north at the legendary Rainbow and their tour bus. Warm thanks to the band!

By sheer accident, also the following night at the House of Blues was booked for another bunch of Finns, a larger one this time, as the Finntroll-headlining “The Finnish Metal Tour 2010” stopped by in the angel city. The evening had a bit of an unfortunate start on my part, as I only saw two last songs of the opening Swallow the Sun. The show had started half an hour earlier that announced on the web page, and I did not know that the original opening act Survivors Zero was excluded from the entire tour (due to Visa problems).

Anyhow, the two STS songs were cheered by the audience. A praising comment that I got from a local guy who was hearing the band verified this. And band itself also felt having played a very good show, as was reported after the gig. Already now it also seemed clear that HoB offers quite good sounds. Moonsorrow that followed was a new live experience for me, and a very positive one. The band put out a very energetic set which was welcomed surprisingly well by the audience. The band’s previous visit to the venue on the Korpiklaani tour a year ago had done the trick. Regardless of the Finnish lyrics (and sense of humour…) Californian kids liked what they saw. And much liked was Finntroll too. Mosh pit was immediately set in motion and did not stop until the final tune was played by the intense band. Neither in the Finntroll case, the Swedish lyrics do not seem to lessen the interest of the band’s devoted Yankee fans who may have been slightly smaller in quantity in comparison to Sonata but much louder and furious. An interesting evening. And it was again prolonged in Rainbow as the bands and a number of their friends populated the bar. Such a large representation of Finns in is probably something that is not often seen in Rainbow.

TMK

MUSIC, LAW AND BUSINESS Conference: Tentative program now online!

http://iaspmnorden.wordpress.com/mlb/

HIM Screamworks tour in UK

By Toni-Matti Karjalainen

BogFires took the chance of checking HIM performing in one of the band’s strongest markets, celebrating their recent “Screamworks…” album. We attended the gigs in Manchester Academy 1 and Newcastle O2 Academy, both venues with a capacity of some 2.000 guests. Manchester was sold out, and Newcastle didn’t have many free places either.

HIM is apparently experiencing a peek in its public recognition in UK. In addition to a recent cover story in Metal Hammer magazine, Kerrang! and Big Cheese covers were both also decorated by Ville Valo’s face. When I arrived in Manchester, I spotted the first Heartagram T-Shirts and beanies right outside the Piccadilly train station, and by the considerable number of HIM fans wandering in the city center it was not difficult to tell which band was playing there in the evening. In Newcastle we noticed that the first fans were lining up outside the venue already by noon, almost 10 hours before the gig would start. And the pirate T-shirt sellers outside the venue, appearing after the Manchester show, are always some kind of a sign of larger reputation.

In the gigs, the band also received a warm welcome. Hardly ever have we witnessed as loud audience. The band enjoyed the attention and played tightly with a seemingly good mood. The atmosphere rose perhaps a bit higher in Newcastle, possibly due to the slightly nicer venue with a more theatre-like construction and consequently enhanced feeling of closeness. There it was, however, more challenging to master sounds that were somewhat better in Manchester. Concerning the visual output, the gig was rather restricted, as usually in the HIM case, but beautiful and well-thought lights nicely changed the moods according to the needs of different songs. Ville’s talks between the songs also reflected the good spirit, even though most of them remain pretty much unclear at least to the balconies.

The gender division among the audience seemed to be quite even in the UK, and various age groups were also presented. Newcastle might have had a larger attendance of younger fans. In general, the newer songs were slightly better welcomed than the old ones, but the old classics also received quite a celebrative response. As the personal opinion, Buried Alive by Love was the tightest moment in both sets. Setlist as such comprised no surprises, as they were identical in both gigs and with most other evenings of the tour. Perhaps well so, as the set seems to be very consistent and offers a good overview of the HIM catalogue.

The L.A. mood rockers Dommin is supporting HIM in this leg. They offered a nice show with hooky songs, grand sounds and good vocal performance. There are a lots of bands that this group is compared to, and personally I felt a few moments with distant references to ones such as The Cult, The 69 Eyes, even Danzig, and yes… Elvis.

Warm thanks to HIM management for including us in the guest lists.

TMK

HIM setlist (both gigs):

Like St. Valentine

Right Here In My Arms

Rip Out The Wings Of A Butterfly

Heartkiller

Join Me In Death

The Kiss Of Dawn

Katherine Wheel

Poison Girl

Buried Alive By Love

Disarm Me (With Your Loneliness)

Your Sweet 666

Wicked Game

When Love And Death Embrace

Encore:

The Sacrament

Scared To Death

The Funeral Of Hearts

MUSIC, LAW AND BUSINESS Conference in Facebook

"Music, Law and Business", the IASPM-Norden 2010 Conference (Helsinki, 24–27 November 2010), which BogFires is co-organising has now a Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/group.php?gid=401766621928&ref=nf

Conference web site:
http://iaspmnorden.wordpress.com/mlb/

Insomnium conquered the Finnish Metal Expo

Finnish Metal Expo, the already traditional two days event was again organized in the Caple Factory of Helsinki on February 19-20, 2010. The event is not only a great music festival with an interesting band bill and a trade fair with various exhibitors but also a great meeting place for bands, industry people, and fans. This year some 5000 visitors gathered inside the roomy space, surrounded by the weather of almost 20 minus degrees multiplied by brisk wind. Hopefully not too many frozen body parts were left on the icy snow-blocked streets of Helsinki.

FME is also an event that shares the annual Finnish Metal Awards, voted by fans among the unlisted assortment of domestic metal bands and artists. This year was a jackpot for Insomnium, the melodic death metallers of Joensuu. Insomnium took the first place on the two most important categories: best band and best album. Moreover, the impressive cover art of their recent “Across the Dark” album, designed by Wille Naukkarinen (also playing himself in Ghost Brigade), was rated second in the album cover art category. All this success came as a big surprise to the band, as told by their singer & bass player Niilo Sevänen with whom I managed to chat soon after the prize release. But hey, it is all well deserved! A funny coincidence in the event was that the prizes were handed out right after the Insomnium gig, their stage sheet still in its place to highlight the prize giving.

Summary of the winners:

Best band: Insomnium ... Best album: Across the Dark, Insomnium ... Best singer: Tomi Joutsen, Amorphis ... Best player: Alexi Laiho, Children of Bodom ... Album cover art: Skyforger, Amorphis (Travis Smith) ... Best newcomer: FM2000 ... Best demo band: Ghoul Patrol

Of the talks I had with various people during the event, one of the most interesting one was with Marko Annala of the successful Finnish thrash group Mokoma. There are great anticipations for the upcoming Mokoma album “Sydänjuuret” (released on March 24). Expectations are high also for the visual side of the new release, as usually in the Mokoma case. The album will be released in the format of a jewel case CD, book CD, vinyl, and a downloadable mp3 with a pdf-booklet, all full of visual works of the “Mokoma artist” Ville Pirinen. Trying more appealing ways to package the album may also been as a countermove for the worrying development of music consumption and fan culture addressed by Marko.

But of course, the core of FME is the live performances. On Friday, the start of the expo was from my behalf spent in expectation for the later acts of the evening. I had a brief glimpse of Korpiklaani, Kiana, [Amatory] and Doom Unit, but the first band arousing my interest was the V For Violence with their quite an interesting song selection and stage presence. Anyhow, the evening was lifted onto a totally different level when Hypocrisy engulfed the stage with their energetic performance. The Swedes were followed by the western neighbours Satyricon that really blew the place apart. Along with the charisma that the band has onstage, especially Satyr himself, their really tight playing, great songs, and super sounds (which is not self-evident in that specific hall) it is easy to rate their gig as the most convincing one in FME 2010. Friday was then closed by Amorphis who played a rather standard show, however including some rarities in the set list. Their starting time at 1 am did not make much sense, especially as the start was delayed by over 20 minutes due to technical reasons.

The second day was purely Finnish. I arrived to the venue to see Insomnium and their powerful set. In addition to the auditory delight, the gig was candy for the eyes with the nicely timed lights dressing up the songs with specific moods. The set should have been longer, but it certainly created expectations for Insomnium headlining shows that hopefully are more to come in the future. Survivors Zero followed with their more old school thrash shredded through with high-quality craftsmanship. For Swallow the Sun, the big and gloomy hall is not a perfect place to catch their magical mood, but the band succeeded well in creating a great atmosphere among the audience. Keyboardist Aleksi Munter mentioned later in the evening that the band itself had really good time on stage, something which you don’t explicitly notice from their cool and restricted appearance, but feel inherently in your guts. Following STS, Apocalyptica appeared, as usually, professional and flawless. The band had a guest singer on “I’m not Jesus”, “Life Burns” and “I Don’t Care”, who remained unrecognized for me (someone knows more?) but was probably the best guest that I have seen doing these songs with the band live. They also offered a beautiful glimpse from their upcoming seventh album. Finally, Sonata Arctica, despite the late slot, managed to pack the hall full, and performed a lively set with the standard good humour of SA. For me, the highlight of the set was the beautiful triplet of the recent album: “As if the World Wasn’t Ending”, “the last Amazing Grace” and “Juliet”.

These were good two days in general. Finnish metal is still going strong, and increasingly versatile.

Toni-Matti Karjalainen

http://www.fme.fi/

http://www.insomnium.net/

Another FME report (in Finnish):

http://www.festarit.org/raportit/209

The IASPM-Norden 2010 Conference on MUSIC, LAW AND BUSINESS

BogFires is co-organising a research conference on music, law and business
in Helsinki, November 24-27.

DEADLINE for proposals is JAN 31!

More information:
http://iaspmnorden.wordpress.com/activities/

Ghost Brigade & HIM @ Helldone, Dec 29 2009

The Helldone festival, grown around the traditional new year's gigs of HIM, is again being arranged in the Tavastia & Semifinal clubs in Helsinki. This year, the set up includes HIM playing four consequent nights with varying supporters + an acoustic warm up by The 69 Eyes at the Semifinal club.

On the second night of the fest, the honour of the opening band was given to Ghost Brigade that has recently received lots of attention and high appraisal in the Finnish music press. Even though the Helldone audience was not the most optimal for GB tunes, the band played an energetic show. It was nice to see that it is possible to transmit the gorgeous atmosphere of their recent "Isolation Songs" masterpiece into the live context. There appeared some scrabbling and stuffy sounds in the two opening pieces, but as soon as "Into the Black light" got in motion, intensity was ensured. As admitted by the band's guitarist Wille Naukkarinen the day after, the band indeed experienced some start-up difficulties due to the preceding gig break.



HIM was also experiencing some technical problems, as Ville needed to constantly remind the technical staff about sound problems and even to got one of the Kaasu's plates change in the middle of the set. In overall, the set was a routine performance, even a slightly listless one, but the audience loved it.



TMK

http://www.myspace.com/helldone

HIM setlist:

Buried Alive By Love
Heartkiller
Right Here In My Arms
Rip Out The Wings Of A Butterfly
Bleed Well
Join Me In Death
Soul On Fire
Love, The Hardest Way
Killing Loneliness
Wicked Game
And Love Said No
The Funeral Of Hearts
Your Sweet 666
Scared To Death
Poison Girl
The Sacrament
Bury Me Deep Inside Your Heart
Pretending
Encore:
When Love And Death Embrace