Sonisphere Comes Into The Daylight

After having a slightly bumpy ride through the Balkan region, the traveling Sonisphere Festival came out into rather too much daylight when it hit Helsinki, Finland, July 2.

“Slipknot played in broad daylight at 1 a.m., then it was like dusk for two hours before it started brightening up again,” Sonisphere co-chief Stuart Galbraith told Pollstar.

The glorious sunshine, even when it came in the middle of the night, as it does this close to the North Pole, was still much better than the storm that washed away part of last year’s Finnish Sonisphere.

The Helsinki harbour site was configured for 15,000 and nearly needed the space as 12,000 showed.

The Sonispheres that happened in the previous two weeks included Greece June 17, where it was better to let a few people in to take the heat out of the protest at the gate.

The country’s spiraling debt, the cuts required to keep up with it and the cost of being bailed out by the European Union has caused riots on a daily basis in Athens.

The show still did 25,000 and was quickly followed by a two-dayer in Istanbul, Turkey, co-promoted with Marcel Avram’s Purple Concerts, which sold out doing similar business.

There would have been another show in Bulgaria June 21 but Avram’s Balkan Entertainment, the local promoter, advised pulling it due to poor ticket sales.

A return visit to Switzerland for a two-dayer co-promoted by Free & Virgin pulled 30,000 per day for two shows in Basel June 23-24, and then a new two-dayer in Bologna, Italy, (June 25-26) sold out 25,000 per day.

The acts on the various Sonisphere bills included Iron Maiden, Linkin Park, Slipknot, Rob Zombie, Motorhead, Apocalyptica, Mastodon and Papa Roach.