The wait is over. Provinssi Rock 2008 offered Finland Justice’s first live set. Justice had gotten a gig offer for the same date from the States, but they refuse playing in the daylight. Because the gig before Radiohead would have been open air, they rather came to Finland where X-Stage tent granted enough darkness for the show.
I was nearly as excited of seeing Justice live as I was when waiting Underworld to appear on stage in Helsinki a year (or two?) ago.
It was awesome. I had seen a couple of videos of their performances, but I had never realized that those Marshall amplifiers are actually light effects and don’t contain any sound components. Very cool effect when they turned them on.
Justice started with Genesis, played the through the obvious hits (DVNO, D.A.N.C.E, We Are Your Friends), introduced two or three new, very strong tracks, played AUTO remix of Stress, mashed-up version of Phantom and finished the 1h 15min set with their version of Metallica’s Master of Puppets including samples from “The Party“.
The sound was very clear and even pretty low in the beginning. But even the sound pressure was low there was definitely a nice amount pressure on the audience, especially on the first rows. Young people totally drunk and with “rock attitude” made sure there were enough elbows to dodge. You could clearly feel you were on a festival and not on a 22-years-and-up club. Maybe I’m just getting old (or never quite gotten the rock festival glamour thing), but I enjoy more concentrating on the music than trying to stay on my feet when the band is on the stage.
However, Justice played a very charismatic live set and being there was a truly cool experience. If you have a possibility of seeing Justice live, just go for it – they are even better than what you have heard.
P.S. If you’re interested, here are a couple of ProvinssiRock cameraphone photos.
Oh, of course YouTube had a video of the Master of Puppets remix: