Pain has a knack for bringing along interesting support bands for their tours. Engel I already knew was able to deliver something I like, but nothing could have prepared me for the chock of seeing Turmion Kätilöt!

Turmion Kätilöt (which means something in the direction of ”midwives of ruin”) is a Finnish industrial metal band with four full-length albums under their belt and consist of creator and vocalist MC Raaka Pee (Petja Turunen), vocalist Spellgoth (Tuomas Rytkönen), keyboardist RunQ (Janne Tolsa), bassist Master Bates (Hannu Voutilainen), guitarist Bobby Undertaker (Miika Närhi) and drummer DQ (Antero Seppänen).
All of this I was completely unaware of though as it was time for the band to take the stage, the only thing I did know was that they were from Finland and that was about it... Imagine my surprise then when they enter the stage wearing bizarre corpse-paint and even more bizarre outfits; DQ’s striped shorts put a grin on my face, but most out there was definitely Spellgoth with his mutilated tights and bondage attire! Ok, so the studs made of long screws which were on both of MC Raaka Pee’s arms were pretty intimidating as well, and I’m glad I wasn’t standing too close when he began swinging his massive arms around.

And swing they did!
Both the MC and Spellgoth were as happy doing little dances to the music as they were headbanging to it, even more so maybe, and why not? The first song of the evening, U.S.C.H!, bore an uncanny likeness to the old Eurodance hit No Limit by 2 Unlimited, so you could say it was kind of in the air...
The other guys acted more 'metal-like' with some quality posing and headbanging, with the one stand-out exception of Bates who was almost as lively as the frontmen, and seemed to have quite a lot of fun up there - sometimes a little bit more than what the other guys would accept; I once saw him measuring up a kick to one of the drums, but he was stopped by an unappreciative look from DQ...
MC Raaka Pee was also the most crowd-friendly of the bunch (with Spellgoth coming in a not too distant second), and when he wasn’t spraying the audience with beer (which he seemed to have an unlimited supply of hidden away in his coat pockets) or dancing around the stage, he was more than happy to get down into the security pit and get all close and friendly with the people standing there. He did his best in getting people to sing along by sharing the mic with them, he was shaking hands and shaking heads, and in general behaved just the way an outstanding performer should.

Sadly, and even more so strangely, it didn’t really pay off for him and the band though...
As Turmion Kätilöt was the first bad of the night, the crowd wasn’t exactly what you would call overwhelming in size yet, and even though there were a nice bit of people standing in the frontline and closely behind it, no one really gave the band the response they sought so hard. I don’t know why, maybe they were all stunned by the shock of this spectacle that was taking place in front of their eyes, but I would certainly have thought that people would be a little bit more on the beat with this, especially considering the bands effort with the show.
Even when the gig was over, MC Raaka Pee and Spellgoth was doing their bit to imprint the band-name in the audiences consciousness by one last time taking to the security pit where Pee handed out flyers from the band, and Spellgoth carried a banana and a pair of kiwi’s in an insinuating way which he let those who dared stroke for a bit...

The best description I can really give of Turmion Kätilöt is that it must be the bastard child between Darkthrone and Gloria Gaynor, which was sent off to be raised at a freak show somewhere in the deep darkness of Eastern Europe. It was darkly light in its approach, infectiously entertaining, and just damn fun!
The only downside was that just past the mid-point of the show (maybe in the song Grand Ball?), Spellgoth’s left ball fell out of his holed leg-clothing; it was like a bad car-crash on the highway, you didn’t want to look but had you once seen it, it just stayed on in your consciousness whether you wanted it to or not...

Setlist:

U.S.C.H!
Suolainen Kapteeni
Lapset Ja Vanhemmat
Verta Ja Lihaa
Grand Ball
Minä Määrään
Hades