Heavy metal with mass appeal

(China Daily) Most teens may not get excited about going to church, but in Finland they are caught up in a craze sweeping the nation: Metal Mass.

"It's nice that there are slightly different church services compared to the usual ones," says 15-year-old Teea Pallaskari, who skips geography class to make the service in the plain, red-brick Lutheran Church - the state religion - in a small town north of Helsinki.

Inside, Pallaskari and her classmates squash together on packed pews, belting out hymns as a lead singer moshes wildly on stage to his band's ear-splitting tones.

When the music stops, the students burst into ecstatic applause and whistles, much to the approval of the pastor.

"It was really good," says Akseli Inkinen, a 17-year-old high school student with long, messy hair and big headphones.

It is hardly surprising that masses with metal hymns have surfaced in Finland - this is the country which won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time in 2006 with Lordi's monster heavy metal song Hard Rock Hallelujah.

If it has a niche audience elsewhere, heavy metal is now mainstream in Finland. Helsinki alone abounds with heavy metal karaoke bars, dedicated metal clubs and regular gigs, adding to the dozens of summertime heavy metal festivals held around the Nordic country.

Some say the answer lies in the Finnish character.

"Finns are known to be reserved, serious and very honest. Somehow heavy metal fits into this as it is no-nonsense, honest, straightforward and quite gloomy," says Mikko Saari, a co-founder of Metal Mass ("Metallimessu" in Finnish).

"When you switch on the radio in Finland, you hear heavy metal music. The Finnish Eurovision Song Contest and even Idols (the Finnish equivalent to American Idol), were won with metal songs," says Kimmo Kuusniemi, one of Finland's Metal Mass pioneers.

The first Metal Mass in Finland was held in 2006 at the "Tuska" ("Pain") metal music festival in Helsinki. Since then, a Metal Mass tour bus has been zigzagging across the country.

"This is not the church's plan. Bishops did not plan this. It was started by five metal fans, three of whom worked at a church," Saari says.

Not everyone is happy with the mix. Some churchgoers feel loud rock music has no place in a house of God, and some pure metal fans accuse the Lutheran Church of co-opting their music to lure young people.

"Of course some Christian circles were scared and some true metal people were irate. But many said that the idea was great and that they had been waiting for it," Saari says.

Kuusniemi, 50, who is producing a documentary about Finnish metal music, says he was also skeptical at first.

"For me, metal mass was a surprise. Metal music and church did not fit in the same room," he says.

But the Finnish music scene has changed dramatically since he started his own band, Sarcofagus, in the late 1970s when the genre was widely considered "devil music", he says.

"Heavy metal is truly a mainstream phenomenon, metal is everywhere, and people have a positive attitude toward it."

Heavy metal gained a foothold in Finland thanks to independent record labels who gave little-known metal bands a chance to record, according to Jouni Markkanen, a promoter and agent with Finnish Metal Events (FME).

But now the big - and small - record companies are investing heavily.

"There are many bands with export potential in Finland, it has been proven," says Markkanen, saying Nightwish and HIM as well as Children of Bodom have sold well abroad.

But "we are still waiting for a mega class success".

(China Daily 09/23/2008 page19)