My god drinks Magyar
Let’s make this clear for once and for all: Anal Thunder has the best stage act in whole Finland.
Completely maniac action on stage, speeches between the songs which riducule the typical audience-kissing done by rockstars and rather unique stage dancers: a giant-sized bottle of Magyar Fehér Bor (cheap Hungarian white wine) and a beer-monster made out of emptied 12-unit cardboard boxes, who make it instantly quite clear what the show is about.
But Anal Thunder doesn’t only work through a visual show alone. Melodic hooks, catchy choruses and a hit parade going on song after song affirm the tingling in my feet: you can’t help liking this, you have to dance to this. From time to time you could hear a rock-dinosaur in his death throes roaring at the main stage, which coincidentally happens to represent the stage of music against which punk was originally born.
From the first moments all the way to the end, the audience and the group were strongly connected, and such hits as “Lifelong Hangover” and “Drink Myself to Death” felt rather appropriate for both the time of the show and to describe the general mood at the festival. Despite of their rather crusty punk-attitude, Anal Thunder has apparently managed to reach more “normal” festival-goers as well, and I could even overhear two middle-aged security guys praise the gig.
A good example of the chaos was the guitar clinic held before the encore, where the band shared such tips as drinking a sixpack of beer and a bottle of wine before going on stage, and taking your clothes off if tuning in the middle of a concert seems like a too difficult task.
Anal Thunder is the best, there couldn’t have been a better way to end Saturday in Ilosaarirock than this.
Text: Juha Ekholm
Photo: Markus Korpi-Hallila