hosted Wanaja Festival by the lake Vanaja last weekend and my all time favorite band Tarot was playing! There were also some other famous Finnish bands like Stratovarius, Popeda, Eppu Normaali and others but I couldn’t wait to see my idols Tarot. The festival area was in the park of the old castle of Häme region (Hämeenlinna translates as Castle of Häme) and the other end of the area was limited by the moat of the castle so it had pretty cool surroundings too! The castle itself is one of the medieval state castles of Finland and has origins somewhere between AD 1200-1300. The castle was built by the strait of lake Vanaja which is connected to numerous lakes and therefore was part of important watercourse.
There were two stages and when Statovarius finished on the other we rushed to the other stage to get up close to see Tarot. I bought the band’s first LP Spell of Iron back in 1986 and their music blew 11 years old Mika's mind!! It was something new and exiting and the first Finnish band that sounded it could compete also internationally with the best bands of the era... but the music scene of Finland back in 1986 was very different to today and they never got international success they deserved. They were the pioneers and had to pay the prize for it but recently the band has been more active than ever and 
requested to play shows also world wide! The fact that the lead singer and bass player Marco joined 2002 other Finnish band Nightwish when they needed a new bass player. Nightwish was already enjoying a huge success worldwide and joining them made also Marco and his unique voice famous! People started to get 
interested of Marco's own band, Tarot and I hope they will get big this time after 24 years! They are all very talented musicians and playing together for so long has made them sound live as good as on record if not better! At Wanaja Festival they played all the hits from the three latest albums and the new material is so strong I didn't miss even the evergreen hits from Spell Of Iron! This was actually only second time that I saw them live. The first time was also in Hämeenlinna after their second album had came out so it must have been about 20 years ago!!
24 years has passed since Tarot's first album but there are songs that still give me goose bumbs!! Here's a link for the video of one of the songs called wings of darkness The lyrics are ace: "The skies are open, smell of a danger in the air... We ride the north wind.... living on the edge looking danger in to the eye!" and the 80's killer looks!!
Check out also one video of the killer song I walk forever from the new Gravity Of Light album and see how the band has evolved. Now they have a keyboard player as well and another lead vocalist. Check out how well the two singer's voices work together!!
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