Hassisen Kone

In August 1982, at the peak of their commercial and critical success, Hassisen Kone - the band that had revolutionized rock made in Suomi in just three albums - decided to split up. It's a choice that, seen in hindsight, perfectly illuminates the spirit of "Harsoinen teräs" ("Steel Gauze"), a work conceived not to consolidate success, but to burn through it, bringing to completion a creative journey that had blazed for just three years.
Behind it all is Ismo Alanko, a central figure in contemporary Finnish music: multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and performer, who over the course of his career has spanned almost half a century of music, reinventing himself at every turn, from Hassisen Kone to Sielun Veljet, through to the Säätiö project and his long solo career.

Founded in Joensuu in 1979 by Alanko together with guitarist Reijo Heiskanen and brothers Harri and Jussi Kinnunen, Hassisen Kone represent the first laboratory of this artistic quest. The name, borrowed from a small local company that made sausage slicers, already reflects the band's irreverent irony. In just three years the group moved from the direct, provocative punk of their beginnings to an increasingly complex and ambitious style of songwriting.
The shift is already evident between the first two albums. "Täältä tullaan Venäjä!" retains the urgency of new wave and punk, while "Rumat sävelet" introduces darker, more theatrical and introspective songwriting. After that album, the line-up expanded with the addition of keyboardist Safka Pekkonen, saxophonist Antti Seppo, percussionist and xylophonist Hannu Porkka, and guitarist Jukka Orma - an expansion that is immediately reflected in the band's sonic palette. By early 1982 Hassisen Kone had reached full artistic maturity: the arrangements grew richer, the interplay between sax, keyboards, xylophone and guitars took on a central role, and the song form stretched with an expressive freedom the band had never shown before.

This evolution culminates in March 1982 with the release of "Harsoinen teräs" ("Steel Gauze"). The group definitively abandons the ironic punk of their early days to create a record of "psychedelic new wave" with a romantic flavour, in which Finnish post-punk drive merges with prog digressions, touches of reggae and ska, and arrangements that are elaborate yet always coherent. The album quickly reaches number one on the charts and goes gold with almost 50,000 copies sold. A promotional English-language version, "High Tension Wire", is also produced in parallel, but it fails to capture the poetic spirit of the original and falls far short of the domestic success.

The tracks

The title track, placed at the opening, immediately sets the album's atmosphere: visionary yet controlled, physical and abstract at once. The song rests on the tremolo of a xylophone and an electric piano riff that, weaving together with an intricate bass line and a drum pattern built almost entirely around the toms, produces a kind of mutant tango tinged with noir. Alanko's voice moves as if in a trance, while the lyrics build a world dominated by surreal, symbolic imagery. The mysterious "steel gauze" of the title can be read as a metaphor for a power that doesn't impose itself through brute force, but through charm, persuasion and assimilation, slowly transforming the individual from within. The closing lines are emblematic in this sense:

It's a soft guillotine, warm, beautiful and shining.
When it sings, its voice is gold,
but its words are those of the executioner

The oxymoron of the seductive "guillotine" and the contrast between the golden voice and the executioner's words effectively condense this ambiguity: behind what appears charming and reassuring lurks a force capable of erasing the individual's identity. "Kupla kimaltaa" ("The Bubble Glitters") alternates anxious rhythms with more ironic choral moments, winking at ska, with off-beat guitars, blaring sax and abrupt tempo changes. Lyrically, it's one of Alanko's most explicit critiques of consumer society. The protagonist "unscrews his own heart", sacrifices his conscience and keeps walking towards an existence that is "empty and perfect", while the "bubble" of the title becomes the image of an artificial well-being meant to isolate the individual. Consumerism takes on the shape of a grotesque creature in lines like "I'm afraid, it's coming. A giant hamburger is devouring me".

"Levottomat jalat" ("Restless Feet"), the album's hit, opens with a reggae groove led by the Farfisa organ, while the chorus is a post-punk gallop with funk undertones. The sax enters unexpectedly, boosting the track's energy: the mood is at once euphoric and jittery, mirrored in Alanko's vocal performance, which alternates fast, sharp phrasing with brief gasps for breath, conveying a sense of youthful urgency. The chorus, catchy and repetitive just enough, translates the restlessness of the lyrics into rhythm: the "restless feet" become the metaphor for an uncontrollable impulse dragging the protagonist along, while the mind pleads in vain for peace ("So my head screams in despair, but my feet carry me away and off we go again"). The recurring question, "Who's leading me? And what will I get?", suggests a loss of control over one's own destiny, turning the frenzy of motion into a reflection on existential unease.

Another pivotal track, “Totuus” (“The Truth”), slows the tempo and plunges the listener into a contemplative mood. The drums stay in reggae territory but with a more measured pace, the xylophone weaves an incessant pattern, and the arrangement introduces dub echoes, with reverbs and suspensions that expand the sonic space — an unprecedented choice for Finnish rock of the era. Alanko's voice emerges as an oracular presence, while the lyrics reflect on the relationship between truth, justice and power:

Truth passes beneath power, bends and breaks.
It is not a hungry mouth devouring justice,
but one demanding equality.
Weakness desires power. Who could console it?
Only love can quench that thirst

The song is an ethical reflection on the relationship between truth, justice and power. Power distorts truth, while even the noblest ideals risk being bent by the pursuit of dominance. The ending, however, opens up to an even more universal perspective:

A drop of justice, of truth and of love
has been planted in our hearts.
But why doesn't it flow from the heart to the brain?

Alanko suggests that mankind already possesses within itself the capacity to recognize good, but that this struggles to translate into thought and action. The true conflict lies between what the heart intuits and what the mind ends up justifying.
At two and a half minutes, “Eksyneet lampaat” is a curt post-punk surge built on slapped bass, percussive layers and unexpected interplay between electric and acoustic piano. Even more aggressive is “Julkinen eläin” (“Public Animal”), driven by slashing sax, psychedelic textures of electric organ and xylophone, and a chorus chanted like an advertising slogan. The lyrics portray a society that turns nature into spectacle, amid vegetables on display and creatures on exhibition.
“Kuollut eläköön” (“Long Live the Dead!”) unfolds as a mini-suite in several movements. The slow, solemn introduction — “He was a great man, now he lies there. The king is dead” — evokes a sepulchral epic with stentorian piano chords, before describing a “mourning army with funeral veils” accompanying a faltering sovereign, a metaphor for power in decay. After the rhythm section kicks in, the structure fractures into funk jabs akin to the contemporary Talking Heads, and jazz-rock digressions dominated by sax, almost representing the chaos that follows the fall of the king.
The choral refrain declares:

The king is dead, long live the king!
So the world gets more from him.
Time can chain the living, never life

The famous monarchic motto is thus turned into a reflection on power and memory. The paradox is plain: dead, the king serves more than he did alive. Stripped of his human dimension, he becomes a symbol, useful for legitimizing whoever comes after him. The man disappears, but power survives by turning into narrative. The second part of the lyrics broadens the perspective further: “Now on his shoulders weigh the president's life, the death of kings, and the deeds of heroes,” as if to suggest that the weight of history continues to bear down on whoever inherits it. The closing image of “soldiers black as pitch” marching while murmuring “curses and prayers of the pharisees” ultimately introduces a critique of the hypocrisy of authority, suggesting that evil survives even repentance.
Jussi Kinnunen called it “a crazy piece with an absurd number of sections: insane prog and endless virtuosity!”, and the description fits perfectly: “Kuollut eläköön” is the album's technical and dramaturgical peak, a secular ceremony on the transmission of power and the construction of myth.

After such a climax, the album swerves abruptly toward the lightness of “Olen toki, vain sen tiedän” (“Sure I Am, That's All I Know”), a more streamlined pop-funk number rich in nuance: bursts of percussion, interwoven keyboards and arpeggiated guitars, culminating in the noisiest sax solo of the whole record.
The closer is “Pelko” (“Fear”), a track that embodies a fully realized synthesis of Hassisen Kone's poetics. The structure is split in two: the grave, solemn introduction, dominated by organ, deep bass and restrained vocals, evokes an almost liturgical atmosphere. Then the piece detonates into a syncopated groove with a dub-reggae flavor, in which Alanko obsessively repeats “pelko, pelko…”, turning fear into a mantra. The lyrics too largely abandon the surrealism of the earlier tracks to confront the human condition head-on:

When your brain stops,
you'll be left alone with your heart.
Are you afraid? Hey, are you afraid?
You won't be able to hide anything anymore

Fear is described as the moment when every mask falls away and the individual is forced to face themselves. In the second part, Alanko rejects any moralistic temptation:

None of us should play at being the great judge. 
No one can redeem another's life.
The crime is already its own punishment

The conclusion shifts the gaze from the individual to nature: 

Sermons are written in the lakes,
in the heart of the forests,
on the flanks of the mountains.
Sermons are etched on human faces marked by suffering

Truth, Alanko seems to suggest, belongs neither to preachers nor to institutions, but is already inscribed in nature and in human experience. The song erupts and then withdraws, fading into an endless repetition of the word “pelko” and a melancholy whistle that leaves the listener suspended. It is an epilogue that does not merely evoke fear: it passes through it, reaching an almost cathartic dimension.

The legacy of “Harsoinen teräs”

"Harsoinen teräs" represents the culmination of a rapid but coherent evolution: in three years, Hassisen Kone moved from youthful sarcasm to a cultured, intellectual idea of rock. After the album's release, Alanko sensed that the band had already said everything it had to say, and made the surprising decision to break it up. It was above all a choice driven by renewal: "I didn't want to become fossilized. I needed to destroy everything in order to create something new," he would later say.
The influence of "Harsoinen teräs" on the local alternative culture was evident from the years immediately following its release. Yet this was only the first chapter in Ismo Alanko's story. Refusing to turn success into a formula to repeat, the musician started again from scratch with Sielun Veljet, pursuing a tribal, physical and visionary rock that would reach a new creative peak with "L'amourha" (1985). In the Nineties, his solo career allowed him to explore still different territory, before arriving, with Ismo Alanko Säätiö, at a language that fused rock, folk, chamber music and orchestration, culminating in the ambitious "Hallanvaara" (2002). Three artistic seasons, three distinct projects, and at least three albums now recognized as milestones of Finnish music.

In recent decades Alanko has continued to experiment, alternating electric and acoustic records, symphonic projects, avant-garde collaborations and reunions with his historic bands. His most recent output doesn't always match the creative consistency of the Eighties and Nineties, but it retains intact the curiosity that has guided his entire career.
It's probably this restlessness that explains why, after nearly half a century of activity, Ismo Alanko remains one of the true protagonists of the Finnish music scene. "Harsoinen teräs" remains the first great peak of his artistic arc, but it's also the album that already contains its author's defining trait: the conviction that every achievement represents merely the starting point for a new transformation.

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02/08/2026