Few Finnish bands carry melodic death metal abroad as reliably as Omnium Gatherum, and few frontmen wear the role as easily as Jukka Pelkonen. After the band's Day One performance at Hellsinki Metal Festival 2026, Metal Madness Weekly's Tomi Perrakoski met Pelkonen backstage for an on-camera conversation about the set, the crowd and the state of the band's touring life.
The Set
Omnium Gatherum played to one of the largest early-evening crowds of the Friday bill. The band's sound — dense rhythm guitars under long, bright lead melodies, with Pelkonen's growl anchoring the middle — is built for an open-air stage, and it translated cleanly across the outdoor field at Hellsinki-01. In the interview Pelkonen talks about how a festival set differs from a club set: fewer songs, less room for pacing, and a need to make every one of them land immediately.
Home Crowd, Home Festival
Playing a metal festival in Helsinki is a different proposition than a European support slot, and that is one of the threads in the conversation. Pelkonen speaks about Finnish audiences, about how the domestic festival calendar has grown, and about what a young event like Hellsinki adds to a country that already has a long festival tradition.
Craft and Longevity
The interview also turns to endurance — how a vocalist protects his voice over a long run of shows, how the band's writing has settled into a routine, and what keeps the project moving after two decades in melodic death metal. It is a candid, unhurried conversation rather than a promo cycle interview, which is exactly why we recorded it in full.
Watch the complete video interview in the player above, and listen to the audio version as a Metal Madness Weekly podcast episode.
