Last Saturday I went a couple of hours up North to attend Provinssirock in Seinäjoki, a rather small city in Southern Ostrobothnia that during three days doubles its population and welcomes the parade of festivals goers. Those who have followed my posts in ALLSCANDINAVIAN are already aware that the line-up this year was not my favourite and I was not very thrilled by Saturday’s headliners Manowar, although it was the kings of metal first appearance in Finland in seven years, so a good number of metalheads showed up in Seinäjoki.

Escaping the masses near the main stage, I could focus on the smaller bands, and sure there were plenty of Finnish bands drawing my attention. Early on Rubik, one of my favourites, opened the big tent’s programme on Saturday. Unfortunately, I missed the first 15 minutes because the the media check-in was taken to a new location, one kilometer from the festival’s entrance and it took me a while to find it. My arrival to the festival was not very smooth but once I had my wristband, I rushed to the big tent, where a nice crowd was following Rubik’s show. This is a very ambitious band and does not hesitate to bring horn players, layers of synthesizers and a bunch of weird instruments to reproduce the complex textures of the songs. Still, the band is very tight and every note fells into place, not mattering if the song explores calm psychedelia -think The Flaming Lips-, or turn into a sonic boom -think The Mars Volta.

Next it was time for Risto show and it came as a really surprise. Driven by the keyboard licks of frontman and Risto Ylihärsilä, the band put the audience to dance with funk and dance songs, like Discopallo, rooting in the seventies sound. Only the abuse of pop ballads provoked an unnecessary pause in the pace of the show.

Obviously, all around the festival, there was an atmosphere of metal night, with many people sporting Manowar t-shirts and waiting for other metal shows, like Stam1na, Amorphis and Opeth. While any metal lover could find these bands very attractive -along with Children of Bodom on Friday-, the casual fan could feel a bit disappointed of seeing Provinssirock transformed into another metal festival instead of including the usual diversity of genres and bands in previous years.

Many of those casual fans went to the popular Finnish bands, like alternative punk rockers Apulanta, who showed once again that they can drag a big crowd and put an excellent show as they have been doing for the last 15 years. Next day, with the same enthusiasm, a packed crowd paid tribute to Vesa-Matti Loiri, who on his first appearance at a rock festival put an emotive show singing famous Finnish pop songs in a mellow acoustic set, accompanied by bare instrumentation, while his peculiar wholehearted voice delivered the lyrics. The audience was sold from the very beginning and cheered and applauded with affection between songs. The show was filmed by Mika Kaurismäki for an upcoming documentary that, precisely, will portrait Loiri as the most loved artist in Finland.

Just before the smooth sounds of Loiri’s performance, Callisto set a very different mood with the doom atmospheres of their last album “Providence”. The new songs progressively build minimalistic, droning structures that burst in an outbreak of death metal riffs and vocals; it is something hypnotic and brutal. The small tent was not very full but it was an impressive performance for the small audience that cheered for an encore that did not happen.

It was a disappointment this year to confirm that the smallest stage, between the trees, was not setup this year. It is a shame because it was a unique setting that gave opportunity to create very intimate concerts and over the years there have been some good shows there, mostly of young Finnish bands. This year the organization seemed to be running on a lower budget and decided to dedicate that space to one more bar area conveniently sponsored by a liquor brand.

This was far from being one of the most successful editions of Provinssirock and it was a bit discouraging to notice that scarce audience that stayed to see Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, the closing act on Sunday. There were less than half of the people that arrived in Seinäjoki last year to see Foo Fighters. This year in Finland there is an overload of concerts and festivals: Metallica were playing in Helsinki on Sunday and AC/DC would follow three days later, for instance. With so much competition, Provinssirock did not manage to create an enough attractive programme to bring so many guest as in the previous years.

Besides that, the organization was once again outstanding with an army of volunteers helping out in many aspects. However, it stills puzzles me that even though the festival encourages the use of public transportation, the last concert (Nick Cave) was scheduled to end without enough time to catch the last train to Helsinki, so many people left to the railway station before the show was over.