”Slovenia, we know you have some great fucking beer, so raise your beers!”
- Mathias “Warlord” Nygård (vocals)

With a band like Turisas you just know that this was about as redundant a comment as they come, of course everyone was already raising high whatever they had at their disposal, be it beer, voices or clenched fists.
Already the intro to the show, starting out with the spoken “who is I...” section from To Holmgard And Beyond, and then being pulled longer into a war-march where the members of the band entered the stage, had fired up for the excited crowd in front of the main stage at Metaldays. So far the day had held some pretty brutal death and grindcore, but it was now time for some more frivolous melodies to fill the gap between the Slovenian Alps that Metaldays call home.
The war-marching intro marched straight into The March Of The Varangian Guard, and now we were well on the way to conquest of epic proportions!
The crowd legion helped hold the concert going throughout its entirety – straight from the start and all the way to the last note they were singing along loudly and as best as they could, and the p.e. consisted of crowd surfing a plenty and a very long dancing line, just the way we like it.

The band members weren’t too shabby either, and presented the music with a good amount of energy and strength. A good sound mix, with only Nygård’s clean vocals suffering a bit from drowning in the rest of the orchestration, helped the band along with this.
The new look Jussi Wickström had adapted left me bewildered, wondering if they had hired a new guitarist for a while, but his delivery was unmistakable and soon set the record straight. Their still fairly new drummer, Jaako Jakku, liked to play around with his drumsticks for extra effect – he would throw them high into the air when the beat allowed for it, catching them as they descended and played on, and he only missed it once...
Nygård, whilst remembering the lyrics perfectly, seemed a bit confused about the situation he was in at one point, where he spoke ill of the rain, and praised the crowd for toughening it out to see the show – well, that’s well and good, only, it wasn’t raining during Turisas’ concert.
Nygård made a quick recovery though when addressing the country’s beer brands, making a short comment about the underlying political agenda regarding which beer you drank (I didn’t fully get this one, and can’t comment either on the validity of what he said, or which beer means what), and then proudly naming Laško the best one (this I fully got, and I support the validity of this statement).

All in all, you pretty much know what you’re getting yourself into when going to a Turisas show, and this was no different. It wasn’t the band at the top of their game, but it was highly entertaining nonetheless, and it held a nice surprise in the presentation of a new song, Into The Free, which was used as a commercial for their upcoming album simply called Turisas2013. Other than that, we got a hit mix from their three already released albums, and I was pretty happy with what I walked away with after the show was done.

Setlist:

The March Of The Varangian Guard
Take The Day!
To Holmgard And Beyond
The Great Escape
One More
Into The Free
The Messenger
Stand Up And Fight
Battle Metal