LIVE: Simerock 2026, Rovaniemi, Finland
This year, 2026, Lordi is celebrating the 20th anniversary of The Arockalypse album and winning the Eurovision Song Contest with Hard Rock Hallelujah, and because of that, the summer festival season shows sound and look exactly as they should. Earlier this summer, the band played two festival shows, Kuopiorock and Qstock, here in Finland and I had the biggest, baddest FOMO, since I couldn’t attend them. Instead, I planned a weekend trip to Rovaniemi to see and shoot them at Simerock 2026 on August 8th, and gosh was it well worth it! Lordi played as the main act on the second day of the sold-out festival and seeing them in Mr. Lordi’s home town, with all the revamped and reimagined The Arockalypse era props and effects, and hearing that setlist… well, it was something really special. It’s difficult for a hopeless nostalgic like me to still find words about what we got to witness over there. To put it as simply as I can; pure monstermania. This was the one not to miss. And many monstermaniacs seemed to agree.
The setlist was obviously incredible. Not only did we get to hear all the songs from the album, but also all the rare b-sides and bonus tracks from that era; Mr. Killjoy, EviLove and Beast Loose in Paradise. And we just can not not mention the one crazy cover they did; Tuomiopäivä (Judgment Day) with the one and only heavy metal legend Sakari “Saku“ Östermalm (Timo Kahilainen), a character from the legendary Finnish comedy group Kummeli joining the band on stage to sing the lead vocals. Legendary indeed.
The weekend at Simerock was full of other Lordi activities too. There was a Lordi museum with many previous costumes and rarities on display and non-stop Lordi music videos playing on the screen. Tivoli Sariola had also brought the Lordi ghost train to the festival grounds for people to ride on.
Here’s MonsterDiscoHell’s full photo gallery from the show for you. Be sure to follow MDH on Instagram and Facebook because like always, I will post a lot of photos not in this gallery on the MDH social channels.
(46 PHOTOS)
