Summer 2020 seemed canceled in terms of festivals, luckily in Finland some festivals have taken place, one of them is Poristriimi festival.
The festival, at its first edition, despite the difficulties caused by COVID-19 was a success. The festival was held at the outer courtyard of Ruosniemi brewery in Pori, a city on the west coast of Finland. The organization did an excellent job in terms of safety by limiting the number of participants, providing hand sanitizer at every corner, and remembering to keep safety distances. For those who could not participate in person, the festival was broadcast on stream for free.
The musical proposal was very varied, from hevy metal to eurodance, a mention goes to Uniklubi and Miljoonasade, big names in the Finnish rock scene, but also the local Rust ‘n’ Rage, Iceid and Jackrabbit with their explosive performances.
Beside the music proposal, we want to emphasize the selection of craft beers present at the festival, in fact five brewery were offering their quality beers; Ruosniemi , Rocking Bear , Moose on the Loose , Mufloni and Tampere Brewing & Distilling Co. Poristriimi webpage Poristriimi Facebook Poristriimi Youtube
Sleeping Dog is an alternative metal band from Los Angeles, California. On June 20 their third album “Portal” will be released and, even if they have experimented and combined new elements, they stays true to Sleeping Dog sound. We had the opportunity to interview with Mat and get to know better the band and their music.
-Hey Mat, welcome to The Offering! Would you mind to introduce the band and give us some biographical hints?
Hi this is Mat, frontman of SD, speaking on behalf of Sleeping Dog.
We are a band from Los Angeles, California that was formed in 2012. We have two full length releases “Otis Empire” (2015) and “My Throneless Seeking” (2018).
Our third full length release “Portal” releases 6/20/20.
-What did you bring to choose “Sleeping Dog” as band name?
The quote “It is nought good a sleeping hound to wake ” originates from Geoffrey Chaucer in his poem, Troilus and Criseyde (1320). However I discovered this quote in a different form from William Shakespeare’s play, King Henry IV, Part II. The quote says “let sleeping dogs lie” which basically means to not cause problems.
A sleeping dog is in peace and to wake the dog will cause chaos and uproar. The dog will bark endlessly. Letting the dog sleep will grant you peace.
This name was chosen to hold the meaning true to the band. We value the peace in the band and do not bring any unnecessary problems into the fold. Sleeping Dog stays true to the music and speaks only the truth.
-Your new album is going to be released this month, what can you tell about its genesis and lyrics? And what are the main differences compared with your previous works “My Throneless Seeking” and “Otis Empire”?
Portal’s writing process started around late 2018. The album cover of an astronaut resonates with the story I was trying to tell. Briefly, the story is about an astronaut who leaves everything behind to escape in another world because of the true evil in the world he was living in. Thus escaping through a portal to create his own truth.
Mainly , the lyrics are about everything I have gone through. It’s about the music industry I can’t change and about the system I’m running a race with. It seems endless like a burial through a digital algorithm in an endless matrix. Everything seems so fast and irrelevant. Songs such as “New Blood”, “System”, “Don’t Pass the Torch if You Don’t Have the Flame”, and “Iron Lung”… explain this.
Some songs touch base on staying true to human interactions. Good and bad. Everything is a natural part of the human experience. It’s nothing I can change and it’s necessary to have both. Stay true to your emotions and accept them as a part of your life. Songs such as “The More You Want the Less You Get”, “War Machine”, “Pry”, “Throw It All Away”, and “The Good Times” explain this.
Portal is different in many ways. To start, the production is done in a completely different way than “My Throneless Seeking” and “Otis Empire”. The sound of the room became a huge instrument in the creation process. It sets up the mood and space you hear in these songs. Also, there are many elements that the other two albums never ventured into such as rap and a variation of different guitar tunings. The lyrics are different and hold more conviction to a bigger cause rather than personal ones.
That being said it still holds the same integrity as a Sleeping Dog album and stays true to the sound.
-We recently had a difficult time because of the corona virus, how did you manage working on the released of the album? Did this situation slow up your work? Not at all. Quarantine gave me all the time to finish and polish the songs for the release.
– You describe your musical style as alternative, but what are your main influences?
Bring Me the Horizon and Linkin Park are the two main influences.
– You are from Los Angeles, how do you see the metal scene there nowadays? Speaking locally, It is small and underground. I know just a handful of bands who play metal in Los Angeles.
– Even if in this moment everything is uncertain , are you planning a tour? And what are the countries you would like to play concerts in the future?
Things seem very uncertain in the music scene right now, however if SD could ever play in the future it would be Japan or Europe.
– If you could choose a band to tour with, which one would be?
It would be amazing to tour with Crystal Lake from Japan.
-We are at the end of this interview, thank you so much for your time! Would you like to say something to our readers? Thank you for all your support. Stay true and never be afraid to speak the truth.
The Finnish band Viikate is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the album “Kuu kaakon yllä” with a special summer tour. At the same time the band is working on new music and a new album should be release next year.
We had the opportunity to meet Kaarle and talk about this tour, the plans for the future and much more.
After almost 4 years since “Braindead” Lost Society has released a new single “No Absolution”. The young Finnish band is ready to release a new album that promises to be a blast.
Next month the band will be engaged with a tour in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and at the end of this year they will hit 6 Finnish cities with “The Best Tour Ever part.1” which will include the new Finnish generation of heavy metal as Arion, Shiraz Lane and Wheel.
We had the opportunity to meet Samy after their energetic show at Porispere and have a chat about their music, the plans for the future and much more.
Memoira is a symphonic-progressive band from Finland. The band started back in 2001 with the name Serene after 6 years due to a change of line-up also the name changed.
After a break of 4 years, in 2018 Jani Puusa and Lassi Nuolivaara decided to put up the band and start a new journey with a new vocalist Annika Jalkanen, bassist Niko Laaksonen, guitarist Hannu Lindholm and drummer Matti Virtanen.
We had the opportunity to meet the band after their show at Porispere and talk about their music, the upcoming album and much more.
Children of Bodom has been on the scene over 20 years, their last album “Hexed” has been released last March and it got a lot of consensus from media and fans.
Before their show at Porispere, we had the opportunity to meet Alexi and talk about their music, the upcoming shows and much more.
The young Finnish rock band Shiraz Lane, after many years with Frontiers Records, has signed with the record label Ranka Kustannus and they are working on a new album.
The new single “Do you” has been released today and you can listen it on spotify.
We had the opportunity to meet Hannes and Miki before their show at Porispere and talk about the upcoming album, the last European tour with H.E.A.T. and much more.
LAZY BONEZ is a colorful mixture of artists from Finland, that plays melodic heavy metal.
Their last album “Kiss of the night” has been released last October and they are actually working on new material.
We had the opportunity to meet Tommi and Jaakko and talk about their music, the absurd fact related to the word kiss in the title of their single and much more.
