DVD review: Turisas - A Finnish Summer

On receiving an invitation to spend A Finnish Summer with Turisas, you’d likely respond in one of two ways: either “hell, yeah!” or “who the hell are Turisas, anyway?” To answer the latter question, Turisas are a Finnish metal band who specialise in (and arguably pioneered) ‘battle metal’ - the sort that involves dressing up like a rampaging Viking and playing ridiculously symphonic heavy music. A Finnish Summer is their new DVD, including the titular rockumentary as well as a festival-length live set compiled from a number of gigs and a spattering of obligatory extras.

So, what of the rockumentary? If there’s one thing that ‘reality television’ has taught us (or those of us with an IQ bigger than our shoe size, at least) it’s that the screen might not lie, but it manipulates the truth with a dexterity that puts government statisticians to shame. As a result, we expect ‘reality’ footage to be over-the-top, in-your-face, larger-than-life… we expect to see people portrayed as massive amplifications of their foibles, and not much else. Think back to the Pantera backstage videos of old… surely the equivalent from a battle metal band is going to be an orgy of drunken mania and carnage that makes Odin’s banquet table look like a Women’s Institute picnic?

It would appear not. Quite the opposite, in fact; Turisas come across as some of the nicest, most amiable and unpretentious metalheads you could ever hope to meet. A Finnish Summer portrays them rolling around their home country playing a selection of festival dates, culminating in their own home town, and is intercut with brief snippets of interviews about the band’s past as well as members of the band talking about (and demonstrating) Finnish culture, traditions and history. As such, the apogee of Turisas‘ debauchery and rock’n'roll behaviour is staying up all night at Midsummer, having nailed raw fish to planks of wood (seriously), flailed themselves with tree branches while enjoying a sauna and taken a swim in an idyllic but remarkably chilly-looking lake. Not that they don’t go to excessive extremes occasionally, mind you - they did use a whole kilo of real butter for basting the fish!

Of course, this reality could be just as carefully managed as its opposite; perhaps Turisas actually subsist on a diet of mead, blood and rapine when the cameras are turned off. But on the evidence of A Finnish Summer, you’d have little to worry about when taking them home to your parents’ place… your mum would probably even forgive them the mess they make of the sink when they put on their stage make-up. But there’s the point, I guess; Turisas don’t take themselves at all seriously off-stage, but on-stage it’s high theatre all the way.

I’ll be frank and say I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to buy a Turisas album, but on the basis of the concert footage on A Finnish Summer I’d make a point of catching their set at a festival if I got the chance - because it’s that sense of theatre that made metal such a cultural success story in the first place, and when it’s done right you can’t help but be reminded of that fact. It’s like an equation that doesn’t add up on paper: grown adults dressed in leather and furs and coated with fake blood performing strident yet melodic heavy metal epics about Norse mythology and folklore doesn’t sound like that much fun at first, but I found myself wearing a shit-eating grin right the way through the footage. It helps that Turisas themselves are plainly having just as much fun as the neck-flailing audiences of Finnish metallers; it also helps that - incongruously enough - the line-up includes one gentleman Viking playing the violin and a lady Viking playing an accordion.

If it is at all possible for anyone to have watched the documentary and concert footage on A Finnish Summer and still think Turisas aren’t having the best sort of laugh - the sort that isn’t at anyone’s expense, essentially - then the addition of the promotional video for their rousing and ridiculous cover of Boney-M’s “Ra Ra Rasputin” is your only hope. If that doesn’t work, then the fault is entirely with the cynical viewer and not the band themselves, and you may as well dispatch them to their bedrooms where they can flagellate themselves with the Deicide back-catalogue. While refreshingly honest, the documentary’s lack of crazy high-jinks means it will probably only be of real interest to die-hard Turisas fans and enthusiasts of Finnish culture. However, wherever metalheads with a sense of humour might gather in the presence of alcohol and comfortable seating, the concert footage alone should provide a good eighty minutes of horn-raising entertainment.

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