- Feb 5, 2002
- 165,488
- 55,185
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Catholic
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Others
MAENTSAELAE, Finland (AFP)
Continued- http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jxbfNT6wiN2oOOgxeuNf-As3fvpQ
Most teens may not get excited about church, but in Finland they go out of their way to attend in the latest testimony to the country's infatuation with heavy metal music: Metal Mass.
"It's nice that there are slightly different church services compared to the usual ones," says 15-year-old Teea Pallaskari, who skipped geography class to make the service in the plain, red-brick Lutheran Church -- the state religion -- in this small town about 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of Helsinki.
Inside, Pallaskari and her classmates squash together on packed pews, belting out hymns as a lead singer moshes wildly onstage to his band's earsplitting tones.
When the music stops, the students burst into ecstatic applause and whistles -- to smiling approval from Pastor Haka Kekaelaeinen. It's Metal Mass -- or Metallimessu -- and it's okay to be loud.
"It was really good," Akseli Inkinen, a 17-year-old high school student with long, messy hair and big headphones, says afterwards.
It is hardly surprising that masses with metal hymns have surfaced in Finland, which won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time in 2006 with Lordi's monster heavy metal song "Hard Rock Hallelujah".
Continued- http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jxbfNT6wiN2oOOgxeuNf-As3fvpQ