The lead singer and only consistent member of Finland’s Terveet Kädet is named Läjä Äijälä.
That’s five umlauts. Count ‘em. Five.
How much more metal could you be than having five umlauts in your name?
The answer is: None. None more metal. (Unless, of course, you have six umlauts. But you don’t.)
But really, Terveet Kädet is a punk band, and how much more punk could you be than being none more metal but really being punk?
The answer is: None.
But now we’re losing the point…
Terveet Kädet is credited as being the first hardcore punk band in Finnish history, starting out in 1980 in Tornio, which is a town of about 22,000 people way the hell up in the top of Finland on the Swedish border. Their name can be translated as “healthy hands,” but damned if I know what that really means. And I don’t care, either – I just know that this latest album is fun as hell, an eighteen-track slab of classic-sounding, metal-tinged hardcore punk that I enjoy thoroughly despite not speaking a lick of Finnish.
But you see, that’s one of the beauties of this type of music – if you can’t understand the lyrics, and I’m sure there’s some important message in there if you do, you can at least understand the aggression, the anger, the outrage. That much is universal. And really, that fury is the underlying message, no matter the words. And that’s why this band has been regularly hailed as an influence on Sepultura, and on Max Cavelara in particular, despite living a literal half-world away.
Despite Terveet Kädet being a punk band, their metal influence is evident from the start, from the pounding heavy riff that introduces “Polku Päättyy.” (Since I don’t speak Finnish, as we’ve established, I imagine that “Polku Päättyy” translates to “Polka Party” and this is a Weird Al cover, but apparently, it’s not.) From there, Lapin Helvetti rips through a further seventeen songs of quality hardcore – it’s all about the riffs and the energy, the shout-along chorus (if you can shout in Finnish, or at least, pretend to), and thankfully, Terveet Kädet is great at all of those. From the speed-metal riff of “Luonto Kutsuu” to the thrash opening of “Minä Olen” to the post-rock/post-punk vibe of “Kalpea Mies,” Lapin delivers some thirty minutes of hardcore fun, in the classic sense. Catchy riffs meet d-beat bashing meet sheer moshworthy velocity, and while the result may not be particularly original now, some thirty years into hardcore, it’s nevertheless exceedingly enjoyable.
Hardcore isn’t always about breaking ground – it’s ultimately about breaking skulls, as clichéd and bro-down as that sounds. It’s about the anger and the fury, filtered through rock’n’roll and now through metal, and all delivered at maximum volume with maximum intensity. Terveet Kädet earned their stripes years ago, and now they’re back, and they’re still as pissed off as ever.
