Sara Hammerzmith

That’s an extremly… sophisticated title. Sorry about that, but I couldn’t figure out anything better! Anyways yes, as you probably knew, I spent my weekend in Finland, for the fourth and last time this year, unfortuneatley.

As usual, the trip began at midnight from where I live to Arlanda, and I mean you know the drill. Thing is I had to planned to sleep on the bus, I like went out of bed around 2pm, even went riding in the stable to make sure I was tired enough to sleep. But could I? Of course not. I had even put on The Ark on lowvolume to make sure I’d sleep well. But no, didn’t work and after a while I said fuck it. But a bit later, when I had HammerFalls “Chapter V” playing, on HIGHEST possible volume… Lets say the last song I heard was “Hammer Of Justice” and all of a sudden, I hear this creepy voice talking, and I’m like what the fuck. Looking down on my ipod. Turns out I had been sleeping throughout the entire album! (I began on Fury Of The Wild, in case any HammerFall diehards reads this, so technically not the entire album, but from H.O.J) So well, now I know that for next time I’m going somewhere, if I wanna sleep, I shall put on HammerFall and turn it up.

You know what I love? I love the neonsigns that is right before you get into the “arlanda-village”. The only thing I hear in my brain is “You know she likes the light on the neonbroadway signs…” I wish that I one day could capture it good on a picture. I guess I need a really good camera for that, cause mine failed to do that.

Anyways. For this weekends occasion, my plane didn’t leave at it’s usual 06.40 as it always is when I go to Helsinki, it left at 8 sharp. And I got there 04.30. What to do? Well. You go inside, look up the fanciest bathroom you can, lock yourself in and try to sleep. Which I failed, because I get so stressed out trying to sleep inside bathrooms. I’m so scared some staff is coming and unlocking or something like that. Sleeping in airports I can do, but not in the bathrooms. After that you have breakfast. On the bathroom floor. To keep the trip cheap I had brought breakfast from home so… yes. Glamorous, don’t you think?

Filthy glamorous, but that’s how we roll. Eventually, the time actually passed and I fell asleep on the plane, Seriously, I just realized how boring it is. I usually LOVE travelling because you can listen to music and daydream, but I always end up doing spasmic sit-dancing when I travel, and you can’t do that in planes because there are so much people. And also, you can’t dream away, because you need to keep your eye on the “fasten seatbelt” sign. So… yeah. Maybe I should continue sleeping. Either way.

I kinda liked being there late, not so much hours ’til hitting it! But as I awaited the germans (Antha, Alex, Eva), I just had a nice coffe and, yeah, I was of course still kinda sick, not sick as I couldn’t move, but as a sore throat… Yes, having coffe, getting ready and then… not meeting up with the germans. Because haha, I had left for their arrival hall, HOWEVER, they had went to Terminal 2 instead of going out at Terminal 1, so it was a FML moment. But we solved it easy – I got on the bus at T1, and they at T2. SAID AND DONE, reserved a fourseat thing and the moment we got to the busstation at Terminal 2, and I saw Eva and Eva saw me… HAHAHA, People must have thought we were retarded! Typical us.

Anyway.. Yes. We had a nice ride to downtown, and as we saw Argo awaiting us in the centre was also a moment of retardation. We were a bit worried on the bus if we’d find him, but as I said. “Wheter we find him or not – he will find us.” And well, he did! We grab fast…. no. SLOW LUNCH at McDonalds. Seriously, Antha and Alex had to wait… half an hour?! For their chicken nuggets. We said Antha maybe had to go slay the chicken herself. Or the black crowes. HAHA, internjokes.

As Eva went off to see a finnish friend, we others went shopping. Uhm… I think we went to like, Eurokauppa, Ninja, BR Leksaker, Cybershop and Morticia.. With various result! I found a couple of stuff in first three mentioned and Alex got some new badass pants at Morticia. After that, met up with the very best Jasmin and having dinner at McDonalds… again. Before we left for Bäkkäri.

We had a nice walk there. And at a roadcrossing, Argo just randomly started to talk to this guy there. I was like, what the fuck, is he asking for the way maybe? Then I recognized the person. Joni Master. You know, I was told he was coming, but I wasn’t really.. thinking much about it. But all of a sudden, he just… were there!!! I must say though, he is a real cool guy! I imagined he would different, considering what he is like online, but I honestly enjoyed hanging out with him! Hope that will happen again!

Yes, we hit Bäkkäri and we were the first people there. CAN YOU IMAGINE.. typical us though. It’s like queueing. Always get there early. But you know, we ain’t the shy ones. We ain’t the boring ones. So we just sat down, undressed (I mean… jackets.. what the hell?) ordered a few drinks.. and… “Would You Love A Monsterman” comes on…. Do I really need to tell you more? Well. The party started hahaha! I wonder what the manager thought. Ah hell, he must have seen worser things than this!

Green Room opened at 10pm right, and who were the first in? HAHA NOT US. Actually, a few persons beat us, but ok. We were ALMOST first in. And that place… was confusing. There where thousands (almost) different ways you could go and I was mainly like, Ok, sure, why not. We located the wardrobe, put away our stuff and located the stage. Front row! YAY! Or something like that, I hate this no fence thing so I.. step back a bit. Not for pressure, It just… you know… sitting in the lap of the band. And I’ve been sitting in Lemons and Cruzs laps enough so… Well, herefrom it was just insane. Dancing, partying and just awaiting the first band, Apezone!

They were good. Not exactly the kind of music I’m usually into, but I really liked their energy and, I mean, it didn’t suck! Great opening!

Next up was Honey Hellraiser, and the crowd (thank god) grew a little bigger for them!, Yeah, Apezone didn’t have that many in the audience sad to say : ( But at least they got it better, and yeah well.. It was great, as usual really. The audience seemed to have a lotta fun and love the kind of spirit “fresh” bands have you know? I’ve always (yes, it’s ok for me to say ALWAYS now when I see the third gig!) enjoyed HH the most on these concerts. Great, awesome. Just great.

And yeah well then.. Stala and SO.! They were good. To be honest, I have seen better… and they have taken away One Nite Stand! Highly disapprove. But oh god, did Eva and I have a good time? HAHA that is to say the least! I love going to concerts with crazy people, it gets so much more fun. But yes, Concert was fine, but could be better. I also wish Sampsa would you know, losen up a bit. Freak around a bit. Wouldn’t hurt him!

Bands off – Party on! It was just like in Helsinki last time, just a bit better range of music! Dancing, drinking, singing… I just love it. Eventually, and sadly, the germans and Jasmin had to leave, sadest moment of the day. I hate goodbyes. I really do. “Last Call For Alcohol” came on and for the second time ever we did a proper jenka to the song.  The finnish people were looking SO suspiscious on us, but I promies you babes, we will make it happen.

Both me and Argo stayed at Harris place for the weekend, so it was basically just for us to head there for a small afterparty. Argo tried out the electric drums, haha, what a sight!  But you know. There ain’t much more to say about it! For this occasion nor me or Argo had early ship/flights so we could stay a little longer. Had an awesome time, there is nothing better than discuss music with people who knows it.

You know, I kinda lost track of time. So I thought I was almost gonna be late for departure. But you know what happened? DELAYED. OF COURSE, OF COURSE! You know, I was already in kind of a rush you know for the busses home to Karlstad, and the plane kept getting delayed (its like Juha said; Universe doesn’t want me to leave Finland). But eventually we did take off, I got home, and made it to the bus and everything.

This was one of the best weekends, in my life, EVER. I hope this will happen soon again. Real soon. I miss all of you. Heavily.
“Hollywood whore, passed out on the floor, can’t take it no more, I’m sorry but the party is over”

// Sara

Alrighty folks! After catching my breathe a bit I do now intend to tell you all about it. It began early. Or maybe late? Already at 00.05 did the bus leave here from my hometown with the destination Arlanda. Sofia joined in later and then… the adventure began. We had our breakfast around 6, sandwich and coke for me and… sandwich and juice for her I think it was.

After that, we went to check in and through the securitycontrol. AND THE SECURITY OH MY GOD. The queue… It covered half fucking Arlanda!!!!! FUCK!!

Either way, we looked up our gate and then went to get maked up. And seriously, that was the worst… I mean… I have never been so stressed. We went into a toilet, each one, and turns out it was ONLY two toilets in this room, and… so many people decided to come when we were there! They dragged the doors and shit. Good thing is that there was a sign right outside saying there are more toilets on the other side. Puh. But fuck, the stress….

After that.. We sat down. It was approximatley around one hour left until boarding.. So we put some Reckless Love music on and then we just snapped. We took egopics, and we took weird pics and I don’t even….

Well. At this point, time moved on really fast and we had to hurry to our gate because it turns out we had gone to the wrong gate. Good thing we were in good time at least! The flight went really smooth and we landed in Helsinki a bit to early, and that combined with that the airport shuttlebus was late, we got into Helsinki 20 minutes earlier than we had expected too!

Unfortuneatley, all this travelling had made us sick. And considering we had a two hour train ride infront of us, and then another one, this wasn’t good. But since we had gotten these extra 20 minutes, and already had an hour and a half over until the train left, we figured we would go look for a pharmacy. And on our way to Kamppi to look for one, we found Argo! My phone had fucked up so I couldn’t reach him. Good thing he recognized us! And even better, we found a pharmacy next to the trainstation, so we didn’t need to go to Kamppi! Life was good.

After that. We hit McDonalds to pick up lunch to have on the train later, and then we went to our stop at the trainstation. It was like an hour until the train would leave, so we picked up ice cream and then just… sat down. And took a few pictures. Always.

Train came, we went on and just… rode on it. But haha oh my god this train ride….

First, there is a town in Finland with the most hilarious name ever. Träskända. It means Swampbutt kind of. Maybe it’s just fun in Swedish, but give me a break… TRÄSKÄNDA?!?!?! Hahahaha.

Second, we decided after a while to have lunch. At this point we realized how generous McDonalds is with Ketchup, they had given us… SO MUCH! Less fun was that, in the middle of lunch we were asked to switch train : ( and on the new train there were no seats… PARTY ON THE FLOOR!!!… Yeah. And to wrap up this hilariousness, when Sofia was having her burger, it got her lipstick on it. I couldn’t help it, I had to sing “Lipstick” by Jedward.

Yeah well… That pretty much covers it! After a while we did hit Tampere, and it had been raining seas during the trainride, but the moment we stepped out… the sun came! And the sun is here I’m going crazy from the heat… oh sorry, sidetracked! We went to Stockmann and then some musicstores before ACTUALLY going to Tammerfest. To leave to pick up some snacks to have. Then we were back again! To queue.

Reckless Love must be heavy metals Backstreet Boys. This is the one band that is ALL hot, all their songs are catchy and… there were only girls in the line. Not one boy. Except from Argo. Hahahahahahaha… Oh my god.

And yes… we queued. We fixed our hair again, it had gotten kinda messy. While doing that Sofia did all the Crashdiet faces… Oh my god..

Yeah. Of course it started to rain. HEAVILY. Good enough it lasted just an hour or such. There aren’t much to say about the queueing but one thing really upset me.

There was a girl there, she wasn’t from Finland. And there was no information in English what so ever. And apparently the sign said, no professional cameras. Fair enough. But this girl happened to have one. And they neglecgted her entrance, or they would the guard told her. And they couldn’t find a place to put it away for her, safe. How did this end? She had to leave. She couldn’t go to the concert. That makes me so fucking upset. Here she spent probably SHITLOADS of money, more than us, to get here, and this is how they treat her. Great hospitality! Same with toilets. They had no toilets outside, and we were not allowed to go inside just to go to the bathroom. This is, in all honesty, the first festival or concertarena at ALL that this has happened. In Paris they let us in the arena just to use the bathroom, same at Alice Cooper in 2008. Because they know we are no fucking lunatics, we just wanna use the bathroom. This festival, Tammerfest, has no fucking hospitality. Please remember that.

Okay. Then they let us in after a while. Still like, only girls there. Only girls in the front row. Hahaha. First band, in the metalgenre, I see this happen to. Haha, oh the lulz! Either way. Right on time they began.  And this concert was just… amazing. We weren’t many fans there, maybe what, 50-60? But it felt like we were a million. Probably because their fans are like Sabatons fans. Really die hard. Know everything, and do everything. I loved it, every moment of it. The band was really good on stage too. Best moment was “Hot”… Oh my god.. you could really hear the entire small crowd in the bridge..”You dont know you don’t  know, yeah you don’t, you don’t know whats hot if you have not seen this girl she will go all the way, I know, she is hot, she is hot like CALIFORNIA!”

God. Just amazing. But as you know, a more specific review will come on Hårdrock.com.

And I really fancied the girls who stripped in “Hot” . So much kudos to you!

After the gig we went straight to a cafeteria to take a cup of coffe. Hahaha, I hate how uncool it sounds. But hey, we needed the energy! After that we went back to the trainstation to take a train back to Helsinki where we had dinner and then hit the airport again. And there… we tried to sleep for a few hours. We got there around midnight. We “woke up” somewhat around 6 or something, all the noise, oh god the noise! And this was the same spot me and Anthalerero had been sleeping at after Stala&SO. It’s like my own spot on Helsinki Airport. How amazing isn’t that? We had breakfast, I noticed my earring was gone, Argo left for Estonia and then we were two..

And we snapped. Again. We went to our gates, and then we snapped. We played dead and played hookers and built moneytowers, planned igloo buildings and… when we was supposed to get out of the sofas we were lying on we were too lazy to sit up so we rolled off it instead… What the fuck… “What The Hell Did We Do?” fits extremely well here…

After a while we went in the security blablablabla, sat by our gate… when we heard it. Our plane was delayed. DELAYED. We had spent 15 hours already. And now we had to wait even longer. After an hour we could finally board our plane. There was a little hope, we could make it to our bus! Or not. Once boarded we learned that we had to wait for 40 minutes before we could take off. WHAT THE HELL.

We did eventually take off, mum got us new bustickets and then we waited at the busstop at Arlanda for an hour until we FINALLY got on the bus home. With the same driver who drove us to Arlanda a day ago.

And then.. finally home after some ridiculous 48 hours. But it was so worth it. It’s always worth it when you do it for your boys. And Reckless Love… if it’s ANY boys whom it’s worth for, Reckless Love is the guys. This was extremly worth it.. Can’t wait to do it again!

Tschüss!
// Sara

So well yeah, thats pretty much what we did. Sat and enjoyed ourselves and the night at On The Rocks as the place got more and more crowded. A couple of girls sat down on the back of mine and Argos couch and I thought I recognized one of the girls.. And of course! It was Jasmin, and I was so glad to see her again. I didn’t know how small / big On The Rocks was so I was kinda scared I’dn’t meet her laters, but well, yeah, it solved pretty good haha!

After a few more hours (or at least it felt like hours!) they let us or, ratherly, let us down (haha) in the club. You know… I’m not certain how well you know of me and Sofia and our almost-sitting-in-the-lap-of-Crashdiet experiences, but this took the price. There were NO FENCE at all before the stage, and Argo even put his stuff on the stage! And in between and before the acts we chilled out on stage. Fucking amazing. Jasmin came by to take a few pictures before she returned to her friends.

First out was psy’s band, Honey Hellraiser. They were one of the final reasons for me going in the first place and I was really looking forward to see them. And I can just say one thing: They did not let me down. They were just as I expected them to be you know, energetic, fun to watch and incredibly good. My favourite tune during the evening was “Hey Honey”, and so far I can even say it’s my fave song of them.

After a pretty short, but excellent set, the Honeys left the stage to let their fellow mates in Santa Cruz take over. I think it was during this I got to say hello to Ana2009 from MB, it was real nice to see some new faces from Monsterboard! Either way, you know. When I saw Santa Cruz (and made sure it was them, haha!) I was kinda certain I’d enjoy them. After being in this “business” for so long and seeing and hearing so much, you kinda learn how to recognize a band you’d like. And the moment I saw them coming in, I kinda knew what kinda of music they’d play and that I’d enjoy them.

And I did. They were awesome. I can honestly say I didn’t see this one coming from Finland… It might just be me – and also apart from SO, Honeys and Reckless Love – I always see Finland having more heavy stuff than glam and sleaze stuff. So it was a real nice surprise. More finnish music to the people! Santa Cruz left the stage after their refreshing set and by this time, the place have started to get pretty crowded.

This was kinda… surreal you know. SO. hit the stage pretty much right on the time I predicted and even if this wasn’t the first time I’d see him unmasked, it still felt surreal you know? Like this is fucking it. See, there he is! Either way, they hit it off with my favourite song, “Shout!”. I was kinda glad they played it – I usually have you know, no luck with those things. They followed it up with my second favourite “One Nite Stand” and the good old “Got To Believe”.

During “She” I took a look around the audience… SO. doesn’t have a specific audience you know? There were rockers, there were punks, there were hippies, pop-people or just “ordinary” people. And it was one girl that really caught my attention and now she is stuck in my brain everytime I hear “She”. Like she is “She”. And she also defines SO. for me by now. No, sorry, I have no idea who she is.

Their Eurovision song, “Pamela” who was also next song to be executed, was the one who raised the roof. I expected it to be “One Nite Stand” or similar, but no, it was Pamela. The entire floor was jumping and singing. I was glad to see this kind of excitement you know, for SO.

Another thing that surprised me badly was what a good showband SO. is. I mean, I know what kind of person Sampsa is, but I never expected this band to be so… extremly good you know. I always figured they’d be some winging thing from Lordi, less good than Lordi, but instead they ended up clearing the field with Lordi you know. They literally kicked Lordis ass. If you ask me. At least this gig. For me. Compared to Babez.

“Women”, “Bye Bye”, “Back On The Road”, “Wont Let You Down Again”. The songs passed by. The gig passed by too fast too, I guess I enjoyed myself and the band and the feeling in there a bit too much to even notice. The band perfection on stage, the executioning, the energy. It’s undescribable. They are a ridiculously fun band to watch, I guess Sampsa was right when he said two years ago that SO. is the freakiest band from Finland.

And what is even more undescribable? Sampsa and SO. doing my favourite Whitesnake song. Not like it’s gonna happen. Or Wait? Yeah. “Fool For You Loving” was the second last song to the set, and hearing Sampsas tender and lovely voice doing it really gave me chills and made me enjoy the song even more. I demand them to record and release the cover of it.

Last song for the evening arrived, “Everything For Money” and they invited the Honeys and Cruzers to join them on stage, however the Cruzers had left somewhere… I don’t mind though. The combo of Hellraiser and SO. is well and enough for me.

You know… This was a real intersting gig you know. This is the first gig in a real long time that I have really enjoyed every single minute off, even during the supportbands. I wanna thank all the three bands but a bit extra for SO. and Honey Hellraiser for making the evening awesome.

After the show Antha and I got and picked up some merch (I believe Argo did this before the show) and we just… hang around. Talked abit with Saara in the merch, a bit with Psy and other people around. We stuck around until they closed at 4 and aimed for Mc Donalds which was fucking crowded at this point… Well, I don’t blame them really. Sooner or later we did eventually get our food and sat down for a while before it was time for Argo to hit his cruise and me and Antha to return to the airport. We took a nap before we found our destinations and said good bye for this time.

It might be a bit early to say, but so far, this is the funniest and most memorable trip I’ve done this year, and I’m certain it will stay that way. I enjoyed every moment of it, even if it was short and spontaneous. I want to thank Argo, Antha and Jasmin for making it kickass, and also SO. & The Honeys + Saara for making it over the top. Thanks guys. I will never forget it.

// Sara