Suomirokki refers to rock produced in Finland, usually sung in Finnish but successful as of late in English as well.

As was the case in other countries, in the beginning in the 50’s performers would sing covers or translations of international hits, but this later changed. In my experience, Finnish rock gravitates towards glam rock, blues, pop or variatos of heavy metal, which is the genre that might be most familiar to listeners abroad, with bands such as Apocalyptica, Nightwish, the 69 Eyes, Children of Bodom and others.

Currently however, the three most popular Finnish bands abroad are The Rasmus, HIM and Lordi.

I’ll profile many of these bands in future posts.