Discogs is a great source
to keep track of new (Christmas) releases, and this is one of the
7”'s I 'discovered' doing my daily Discogs check. I don't speak
Finnish, but I do know that in Scandinavian languages the word
Christmas resembles the English word 'Yule' (that is probably based
on the Scandinavian word for Christmas), and when I noticed a split
release between two bands that was called 'Joulussplitti', it was not
difficult to translate this to 'Christmasplit', so I knew there was a
record to check out.
I had never heard of the
two Finnish bands on the record, Panssarijuna (which translates as
'Armoured Train') and U.F. Ojala (which turned out to be the name of
the main member of the band). Panssarijuna is from Helsinki, the
Finnish capital, and U.F. Ojala from Tampere, the third largest city
of Finland, and, Wikipedia tells me, the largest Scandinavian city
that is not a costal city. Cool, I learned at least one new thing
today! Finland typically seems like a country where the probability
to have a white Christmas is among the highest in the world, and as
they have long and dark winters, I can imagine they can use a lot of
cheery Christmas songs, to lighten up the dark days of Christmas.
Well, cheery Christmas
songs is not what you are going to find on this split 7”. The 7”
comes in a sleeve that has a picture of what seems a somewhat shabby
kitchen, with a man that sits before a fireplace. Not that you see
much of this man, as a big elf (or gnome) is drawn over the photo (in
the style with suggests it was done by a -say- 10 year old kid), and
is in front of the man. On the back we see a bearded and very
Scandinavian looking guy standing besides a Christmas tree, a picture
that looks as if it was taken in the 1970s. The names of both bands
have been handstamped in gold on the cover, which give the cover an
even more class-y appearance. Both songs have been recorded this year
(nice to see, as many of this year's Christmas 7”'s have songs
recorded in previous years).
U.F. Ojala is a band of
four members, but seems to be the project of the band's songwriter
Teemu Ojala, also a member of punk/hardcore band Haistelijat and
garage rock/punk band The Achtungs. Both these bands have been around
since the early 2010s. U.F. Ojala seems to be around for a shorter
time – they have released one 7” so far, also in 2015, and I
think they have been playing since 2014. Their song is called
'Aattokeikka'. Google Translate can't make any sense of that, so I
don't have a clue what the word means (if it means anything). The
song starts out with a chorus singing 'Ho ho ho' for some time,
accompanied by bluesy guitar work, a chorus that returns several
times in the song, and helps giving it a Christmas-feeling, despite
the lack of bells or any other Christmas sounding sounds, and the
fact that we non-Finish speaking humans can't understand that what
they are singing about is Christmas-related. The singer sounds as if
he had a very long night, with a lot of drinking going on (and I
don't main the drinking of apple juice here), with a lot of things
that went wrong, and is now telling us how bad it was... but I might
be completely wrong here.
On the flipside,
Panssarijuna have a song called 'Paska Lahja', and this means 'Shit
Gift'. The band, who are around longer than U.F. Ojala – their
first EP is from 2011 – describe their sound as 'trauma blues'.
They list blues, country, punk, folk and rillumarei (a Finnish music
style, around in the 1940s/50s, and using an accordina as the main
instrument) as their main influences, and the trauma is mainly coming
from the subject matter of the lyrics. What exactly this shit present
is that singer Johnny Wittu has gotten from Christmas remains covered
in the Finish language for me, although it seems to have something to
do with Barbie - I read somewhere it is about a 'socialist Barbie', a
Barbie that could be re-packaged for every Christmas. The song itself
is uptempo, with melodic and fast guitarwork, and a singer that
sounds somewhat like the U.F. Ojala singer, but on a moment much
earlier in the day. The band made a video for the song, that shows
what are probably the members of the band either partying hard or
suffering from the consequences of their partying – and yeah,
Barbie is there too. The end of the clip is rather psychedelic and a
bit scary...
All in all, a single I
truly enjoyed. It comes on red vinyl and with a Christmas card. You
can order it rhrough Discogs – both labels that put it out (Gafoni and Joteskii Groteskii) sell it there: http://www.discogs.com/sell/release/7806129
Listen to the U.F. Ojala song on Youtube:
And watch the Panssarijuna
video here:
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