Provinssirock Breaks Records

The Finnish festival season had a good start with Provinssirock breaking its attendance records, without actually selling out.

The nearest the 33-year-old fest had ever come to doing that was in 2008, when nearly 75,000 visited the three days.

Since then, the capacity has gone up by 1,000 and this year there were well more than 77,000 visitors, but it was still a handful short of selling out the 26,000-capacity for all three days.

Festival chief Juha Koivisto thinks it was the strength of the bill that caused the festival, which regularly does 22,000 per day, to do that much better in 2011.

He says getting System Of A Down to play its Finnish debut at Provinssirock, and securing it as the only show the act will play in the country in 2011, took care of one day.

The other sellout was headlined by Pendulum, which has steadily grown its Finnish fanbase since playing the festival a couple of years ago.

The other acts at Provinssirock June 17-19 included Volbeat, The Sounds, Social Distortion, DJ Shadow, Wolfmother, The Vaccines, and Von Hertzen Brothers.