16 Jun 2018

Finland's search to find the Global Capital of Metal

From RNZ Music, 1:30 pm on 16 June 2018

Tony Stamp investigates Finland's quest to find the Global Capital of Metal, with help from their Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Some typical Finnish people

Some typical Finnish people Photo: © 2017 Jesse Kämäräinen, all rights reserved.

Finland. Famed for its scenic Lapland region, its festive reindeer, and its abundance of saunas. The UN recently named Finland the happiest place in the world!

But the country can lay claim to another pinnacle: they have the most heavy metal bands per capita in the world. 53.2 bands per 100,000 people, in fact. That’s a lot of metal.

Even Obama weighed in.

So it makes sense that Finland launched a competition to discover which town has the most metal bands per capita. And in true Nordic style it’s all very scientific and precise.

Bands are being catalogued online via an interactive map, and the winner will be crowned the Global Capital of Metal, (with the help of a slew of corporate sponsors). You can read all about it here.

But there’s been a plot twist. The capital city Helsinki (pop. approx. 1.4 million), isn’t happy with its ranking. They’re currently losing to the small town of Lemi (pop. approx. 3000).

So the city’s Deputy Mayor Nasima Razmyar has gotten involved, and along with local metalhead Jussi69, released this call to action.

Nasima Razmyar, Deputy Mayor of Helsinki

Nasima Razmyar, Deputy Mayor of Helsinki Photo: supplied

Evidently Helsinki enjoys a close relationship with the neighbouring Estonian capital, Tallinn (a mere 4.5 hours away by ferry), and Ms Razmyar has proposed the two join forces.

That might sound weirdly unpatriotic, but apparently it doesn’t to Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who have wholeheartedly embraced the idea.

I reached out to the Ministry’s Country Branding Specialist Meira Pappi, to try and put all this in context.

Meira Pappi

Meira Pappi Photo: supplied

Tony Stamp: The Global Capital of Metal Competition – is this essentially a branding exercise for Finland, in that you want to use it to promote tourism?

Meira Pappi: Not really, no. I mean sure, that can be part of it, but this came from the metal community. It was the head of Tuska Open Air Metal Festival (Eeka Mäkynen), and a couple of other people from the community.

They were talking to each other about how Finnish metal bands are touring the world, tickets are selling really well, albums are selling really well – as an example a couple of weeks ago I looked at the Finnish album charts and numbers one and two were Finnish metal albums – and there are more and more metal festivals popping up.

They were saying ‘why don’t we celebrate this?’ In Finland it’s a big, valuable thing.

They came to us and said ‘do you want to be a part of this?’ We definitely wanted to, because when you get a first impression of a country it usually comes from culture or sport, and for at least twenty years, the most significant route to Finland has been heavy metal music.

Finnish metal band Amorphis

Finnish metal band Amorphis Photo: Jarmo Katila

How has metal come to define your country to this extent?

There are a couple of professors in metal in Finland who have studied this, and of course everybody’s got their own opinion, be it the long dark winter, or cold weather, or whatnot.

One thing that is also in the background here is music education, because a lot of the heavy metal that comes from Finland is quite technical and needs a lot of skill, and learning how to play well is definitely [part of] the Finnish culture of music education.

 How do you personally define ‘Metal’?

One thing that comes to mind is the community. It’s pretty tight-knit, both locally and globally, which is why so many people who are into metal music know about Finland and the bands that come from here.

It’s a really warm hearted community. For example at the Tuska Festival, there have been no disturbances in the past years. No one picks a fight. There are no problems.

Tuska Open Air Metal Festival

Tuska Open Air Metal Festival Photo: supplied

Which brings us to the latest development in the Global Capital Of Metal competition – Helsinki is losing to the town of Lemi, and are joining forces with Estonia ‘s capital Tallin to form ‘Hellinn’.

I think Helsinki is quite happy with the number of bands that they have, but it’s per capita, and Helsinki has way more people than the other cities and towns, so therefore they are very much losing.

There was a humorous crisis meeting in Helsinki, like ‘ok what do we do’, and someone suggested reaching out to ‘Southern Helsinki’ [as Tallinn is colloquially known]. I thought that was a really fun idea.

In the press release it says “this would also represent a step towards the long-awaited process of making the two cities into a unified region”. Reading it in New Zealand, I’m not 100% sure how tongue in cheek that statement is.

Well in this context everything is tongue in cheek. But it is true that there have been plans to make Helsinki and Tallinn a bit more like a metropolis area. There are a couple of different plans to build a tunnel between the cities and so on. So there are actual serious plans as well – in addition to ‘Hellinn’.

So the winning town will be crowned The Global Capital of Metal. What does that actually mean in a practical sense?

Well it remains to be seen if there will be an actual crown. At the moment the town of Lemi is in the lead, because they have only 3,000 people, but seven metal bands, so that’s a lot of metal for such a small town.

So whoever wins will get to represent their town at the Tuska Open Air Metal Festival at the end of June, and promote the local metal scene there. And of course it’s a coveted title, so after that they will be known as the global heavy metal capital.

Hellinn

Hellinn Photo: supplied

Update: Meira Pappi emailed me news from the Mayor of Lemi, saying they’re considering changing their name to ‘Lemmy’ in honour of the Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister.

She added, “I love this campaign!”

Voting for the Global Capital of Metal closes June 30th.

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