Good Lord! Hard Rock Hallelujah!

The Eurovision song contest always offers - if not constantly high standard of singing - at least some curious insights into the musical cultures of and relations between various European countries. Such as Finland and Sweden. Especially in these days when each country's participants are creme de la creme of a public vote (read, results of teenagers' and students' text messags).

This year Finland's representative is self-proclaimed "Monster rock band" aptly titled Lord. Or it could a deft move if we got to read headlines such as "Lord rules Europe" afterwards. Instead "Good Lord [and not: Good, Lord!]) seem far more likely. Our main tabloid went for "A monster even scarier than the Loch Ness one selected for Eurovision ..." after Finland's representant got the nod with the ... musical tune titled Hard Rock Hallelujah. (A song titled "The Angel is crying"which definitely has nothing to do with heavy metal finished the bottom of the pile)

But let's be positive about this. This time it is a band some people outside of Finland have actually have heard of it (ok, it might not include you, i admit, but believe your source, some do)

And believe me, if nothing else, they will go out with A BANG! And you will definitely have heard of them, especially if you will attend the live event in Athens.

After all, this is a band relying on the power of serious amounts of "industrial light and magic". I have actually witnessed it myself in Ruisrock festival in Finland, which gathers annually around 100 000 revellers.

Flames shooting up about 10 meters towards the sky that looked more than capable of igniting the whole stage on fire certainly did look impressive after a few drinks. And his voice sounded so hrreerrraarrrvy.

As most heavy metal sounds pretty much the same to me (sorry, sorry ...) the conclusion had to be that there must be worse acts in this field of music ...

The Lord is definitely weird but it might not be that bad for us ... at least they won't be one lost to the obscurity in the masses of pretty young female singers. It really would be difficult to mistake him for a female, and he certainly is not pretty unless your taste is rather ... eclectic.

In any case, I will be waiting for 12 points from Sweden in our time of need ...

Anyway, I am pretty confident that voters will be too scared to give this act zero points! Finland has never won the contest but in the category of "absolute zero acts [nul points]" we are even with Britain and several other countries with one act that did not make the top ten in ANY EUROPEAN COUNTRY, with Norway ruling the rooster in this with two.