On a cloudy evening in Utrecht, The Netherlands, over a thousand fans gathered at TivoliVredenburg to see one of the biggest rock bands from Finland ever perform: The Rasmus. The band first got together over thirty years ago and recently released their eleventh studio album, Weirdo. On the 26th of November, they made a stop in The Netherlands as part of the ‘Weirdo Tour’.
Doors to the venue opened at 19:00, with fans slowly trickling into the room. No barricade had been put up, so fans could get extremely close to the (relatively high) stage. A mere thirty minutes later the introductory song to the first support act, ‘American Pie’ by Don McLean, began playing over the speakers as the lights went off. As soon as the song ended, a spoken introduction welcomed the audience and named all the acts that would take to the stage tonight, “like a storm breaking inside you. This is what’s coming”.
Block of Flats took to the stage first. Just like The Rasmus, the band hails from Finland, and consists of lead singer Jonne Nikkilä, guitarist Jesse Kataja, bassist Kauri Koponen, and drummer Ossi Ågren. The band dove straight into their first two banging songs, ‘Set the World on Fire’ and ‘Lifeline’. Two raised platforms at either side of the stage created extra space for movement, with Nikkilä, Kataja and Koponen making the most of that. A few songs in, Nikkilä took a moment to address the audience. “Utrecht is beautiful,” he stated, which led to some lukewarm cheers; it seemed like not a lot of the fans were actually from the city. He continued by saying that they came all the way from Finland and that they always try to bring a surprise. Today, that surprise would be them playing the song they released that same day, ‘I Stand Below It All’. Slowly but steadily, the crowd grew more excited, and they eagerly put up their flashlights during ‘Darkest Days’ to “light up the darkness”. Before ending the set with ‘Feels Like’, Nikkilä asked the crowd to scream for one last song – and they definitely did.
At 20:15, ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’ by Cher began playing as the lights went down for the second time tonight. The Funeral Portrait took to the stage. The American band consists of lead singer Lee Jennings, guitarists Cody Weissinger and Caleb Freihaut, bassist Robert Weston and drummer Homer Umbanhower. Tonight, however, there were only four on stage, as Freihaut was not present. “We’re The Funeral Portrait from Atlanta, Georgia,” Jennings stated as he urged for the crowd to clap along to the beat of ‘Generation Psycho’. All band members, except Umbanhower of course, moved around the stage continuously, their energy through the roof during the entire set. Jennings also came up to the audience to high five as many people as possible, and those who did not put up their hand on time got a soft tap on the head instead. Many of the songs played by the band tonight were about hard topics Jennings experienced himself, such as being diagnosed with OCD, addiction, and the loss of his grandmother. About the latter he wrote ‘Hearse for Two’, a love letter his grandfather wrote the day he woke up without his wife after 65 years of marriage. The audience was visibly touched and held up their flashlights as they swayed along to the music. The Funeral Portrait played a few more songs, ending with ‘Suffocate City’ from their second album Greetings from Suffocate City.
Only a mere 15 minutes later, creepy music began playing over the speakers as the lights flashed and the LED screen at the back of the stage lit up purple: the colour of The Rasmus’ most recent album. The four band members, lead singer Lauri Ylönen, bassist Eero Heinonen, guitarist Emppu Suhonen and drummer Aki Hakala, came on stage one by one. Suhonen was wearing merch of the first support act, Block of Flats. The band rushed straight into ‘Rest in Pieces’, with the titular words appearing on the LED screen. The four-piece played song after song, occasionally taking a small pause to comment on how awesome the fans and the venue looked. The background on the LED screen changed for every song, displaying, for example, butterflies during ‘No Fear’ and flames during ‘Time to Burn’. Heinonen went to sit down multiple times during the concert, getting even closer to the audience and fistbumping several fans.
A few songs in, Ylönen stated how the band’s career has been a long one and that every time they’ve come back to the Netherlands, the amount of people in attendance has grown. Before the show, Ylönen had spent the entire day writing new songs and he asked the fans to “stick with us till we die”. At the same time, Heinonen had gone to visit a record store, and Suhonen had gone running and “accidentally ran out of the city”. This led to a lot of laughter from the audience. After this short interlude, in between which they’d played a medley of some older music, the band continued with ‘Break These Chains’.
Before playing the only true ballad on the setlist, the room filled with a huge amount of fog. ‘October & April’ was originally sung by Ylönen together with Anette Olzon from Nightwish, but Suhonen would be singing her parts tonight. The audience lit up the room with flashlights for a third time this evening. After playing a few more songs, Heinonen stated that the band was grateful to be here as they “do not see 1600 people smile at us everyday”. They continued by playing a song from the album Dead Letters, which is very personal to the band. They wrote ‘Not Like the Other Girls’ for their friend Nina, who lost her father in a very tragic way. Turning the haunting atmosphere back into a more energetic one, The Rasmus then played the very old ‘F-F-F-Falling’ and the newer punk rock track ‘Banksy’.
It was then time for arguably the highlight of the night, with the band singing their three most well-known songs back to back: ‘Living in a World Without You’, ‘In My Life’, and, of course, ‘In the Shadows’. In some way, it felt strange for this not to be the final song of the night, but at the same time, it definitely woke the entire audience up. The last song before the encore was ‘Weirdo’, which they performed together with Lee Jennings, who also features on the studio version of the track. All band members then left the stage, with only Ylönen returning mere moments later to perform an acoustic version of ‘Sail Away’. The rest of the band came back afterwards for one last banging song: ‘Love Is a Bitch’. The four members showed their gratitude to the audience by going past as many of the fans as possible, holding hands and giving out high fives before leaving the stage.
