Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
You’ve heard stories of legendary bands whose members seemed to have been destined to meet, realize they were meant to play together, to find their path and change the world of rock and roll forever, right?
And, now you’ll roll your eyes and tell me: come on, that era is long-gone. By now everything that was supposed to be created has already been made, there’s not much more to come, and we’ll always be re-watching the same Queen movie, AC/DC gigs, listening to Black Sabbath debut album or reading that same old Led Zeppelin biography.
Now hang on for a second. What if I tell you that this story is not over…?
The day arrived when I was supposed to meet The Feral Kids – a Helsinki rock band I’ve known for a while. For many months I’ve felt like this is a true gem, rising from the same city as many legends that changed the world of music – people who never feared to dream big, some of whom took over the world.
I’m pondering on that as I’m walking towards the Feral Kids’ rehearsal place in the heart of the city… I’m approaching the bar where the band is awaiting me and, as I turn at the corner, from a long distance I can already see the bright pink hair of the Feral Kids’ guitarist, Wuffe. Wuffe is that one rock queen I’d absolutely mention to anyone looking for guitarist inspiration. Just take a look at the videos of their gigs and you’ll know what I mean.
Wuffe is finishing her drink and I spot a guitar case covered in bands stickers right next to her. I say hi to Rudy – Ferals’ drummer – and Krisu, the bassist. From the first second I notice how cool people they are. You can tell straight away that they are rockers – the look, the attitude… the confidence.
As we’re talking, the clouds spread away and I feel warm rays of sunshine.
“Ew, the sun is out…! Let’s go underground”, the guys laugh.
We walk down the stairs to a mysterious basement, our steps echoing in the corridor. I have a feeling like the place is like no other. The more we’re descending, the stronger the sense is of hopes, dreams, of passion.
“Welcome to the basement”, I hear as the door closes and…
for a few seconds I’m speechless. I’ve entered a rock and roll temple, the home of this group and the place where their greatest ideas are being brought into life through music. It’s the exact space you’d imagine rising rockstars to play in – a rock-spirited room covered in posters, guitars hanging on the walls, filled with setlists, photos, cables, drums…
Renko, their guitar player, is already waiting for us in the basement. He smiles as we say hi. The Ferals’ singer Anti joins us a few minutes later. I notice his denim jacket with hand-sewn patches of legendary 80s rock and metal bands. That’s the owner of one of the most distinguishing voices I’ve heard, and a leader that any rock or metal band out there could wholeheartedly envy the Ferals Kids.
We struggle to fit our chairs in the tightly drums-filled room, but soon manage to sit around the recorder. The band members go silent and I take out my notebook.
There’s a lot of questions I’ve written… with my terrible handwriting, so you’ll need to be quite patient with me trying to decipher it. – I laugh, proud of what was supposed to be a joke. Suddenly I stop laughing, as I realize I indeed cannot read through my own handwriting and will now have to improvise. – So, uhm… first of all… how did you come up with the idea of creating this band? Who was the one to actually have the idea of the Feral Kids in mind and gather the members?
“It… wasn’t me!” Anti starts.
“Actually it was our old bass player, Vesku. He’s our manager now.”
“With Rudy, we’ve known each other for almost 20 years”, Wuffe says. “We played together in a couple of bands before.”
“Vesku didn’t have much time and we knew Krisu, so we asked him: do you wanna come?”
“Long story.”
“…we thought, maybe it would be a good idea to try and see how it goes.”, the guitarist continues. “And it went well. I’d known Renko for a long time as well and I asked him to join us. Because we’ve always talked about how we should play together.”
“I saw Wuffe with her band live years ago, I think she was always the coolest one on the stage. And I always wanted to play with her but… she never wanted to play with me!”, Renko laughs.
“Oh, stop that! we never had a chance!”, Wuffe smiles. “So we just started to join our forces and then there were a couple of changes, Vesku moved to another city and we had our first singer Masa, with whom we made the demos… like “Diabolical.”
Yeah, that’s a good one by the way! – That’s one to rock stadiums with, I thought as I first heard the groovy riff of “Diabolical Threat”.
“Masa moved away so we had some changes, Krisu and then Anti joined us.”
“I heard they were missing a singer.”, Anti adds. “I was in another band but I was like: I like your music more, I’d like to come and check it out!”
“So we stole him”, Wuffe jokes. “But yeah, we all had our backgrounds with other bands but this was the first time we played together. And we’ve played together briefly but… with this connection. It just felt right, natural. When we came to the rehearsal place everything… clicked.”
This was nearly like an answer to the question to the Feral Kids that I’ve had in mind for way longer than they could think. Because… they do not merely play together. They seem to be understanding each other in a way more profound manner, as if the sound was the outcome of their connection.
“We have had this line-up for about three years now”, Krisu says. “All the gigs we’ve played with this line-up. So this is The Feral Kids.”
“Also, the band name was Krisu‘s idea.”
Okay… i was wondering if it has anything to do with the Pelle Miljoona song. [“Juokse villi lapsi” – “run, wild child”]
“Ah! No, actually no… well, you can tell it”, Wuffe turns to Krisu and he continues:
“Well, I’m a big fan of Mad Max movies. And in Mad Max 2, there’s this little child with a boomerang, his name is Feral Kid. So I thought… even though we are not kids anymore… but we are definitely feral.”
“It’s kind of funny – yeah we’re feral and it’s kind of in a sarcastic way funny because we’re totally not kids anymore.”
“You know… it’s our inner child.”, Rudy sums up and the band members laugh.
“But yeah, we thought that “feral” kind of describes us.”
The Feral Kids is actually a badass name. And I feel like it fits you very well.
“But it’s THE Feral Kids, not Feral Kids. Cause there’s a Greek band…”
“…that’s called Feral Kids. and we’re “The Feral Kids”. And there’s been… some confusion about that”.
“And if they read this… we wanna play with them!” Anti laughs.
[Cheers Greek Feral Kids! Your fellow Ferals from Finland say hi]
“We should do a tour in Greece! That would be funny. The Feral Kids and Feral Kids.”
Yeah, you actually should! And what’s the story behind the new songs? “Soul too good”and “No wall”? They are so different and somehow when I heard both of them I knew exactly that it’s Feral Kids… I mean, THE Feral Kids – I grin as I correct myself. Damn, they gotta make this Greek tour happen!
“Wow… that’s a compliment!”
It has an amazing consistency… and yet you’ve also sort of changed the style. Because the new song is closer to a ballad. – Indeed. The first time I heard “Soul too good”... well, I had tears in my eyes.
Anti ponders:
“Well, “Soul too good”… originally the lyrics weren’t for that song. In the beginning they were for some faster song. And when they started playing “Soul too good””, he takes a look at his bandmates, “I was like,oh man..! These lyrics would fit that song much better! Because the first line is sort of… a line for a softer song. And when the song came, it fit right in. And even though we are the Feral Kids, there is like a softie in me. I like love songs and stuff like that.”
Wuffe chuckles and I can’t help but giggle too at the thought of the inner softie of one of the most metal-looking vocalists I’ve seen.
“And it’s this kind of relationship song where two people can‘t get together even though they want to.”
The line about gin and tonic was beautiful. Surprising and also poetic in a way.
[“The taste of tonic, but not the gin… the mix of red n’ lips flavours within.”]
“Yeah… We were in here, having a band rehearsal and talking about gin and tonic. And I think there was a lot about Wuffe in that line” – the singer continues as the guitarist raises her eyes – “I remember thinking that because she had red lipstick…”
“And something to drink… I wonder WHY.” Rudy points at Wuffe’s drink.
“I didn’t know that, that’s cool!”, the pink-haired guitar player smiles.
Nice! And how are you feeling about the feedback…? Cause your listeners have known you by “Diabolical threat” or “No wall” by now, and suddenly there’s a style switch?
“My mother likes it.” Anti sums up and the band starts laughing.
“We have been playing it on 2 or 3 gigs and the feedback has been really good.”
“I remember when that song came up we were having this conversation that we should speed up in our shows… And anyway, we came up with this slow song!”
“And it’s really good because there’s a little bit of chaos-way to what we are when we go out on stage…”
“LITTLE BIT.”, Renko notices. The Feral Kids are in fact the one band I know that brings a whole lot of artistic chaos to their live shows.
Rudy continues:
“And then there’s… What was the name? “Soul too good”…”
“You don’t even remember the name of our song!”, Wuffe chuckles.
“Yeah. When we were filming our upcoming music video [No Wall] right here, I was like: this is a little stupid question but… what song are we filming?!”
“You know, drummers.”, the guitarist tells me.
Rudy turns to the bass player:
“I also remember when you came with this song [No Wall], I was like wow! This is it. This is good. This is REAL punk rock.”
Speaking of which… You seem to be relating a lot to punk, yet your sound feels like a whole mix of different genres. It’s super hard to classify you. The first time I heard The Feral Kids, one question I had in my mind was: what genre is that…?
My question is met with a loud laughter from the band members.
“We’re still trying to figure that out”
“Please, give us an answer.”
“We have been arguing a lot on what we are.” the bass player adds.
“We are all listening to so much music.”, Rudy says. “And one of the first songs like the Hellacopters [the song’s working title] song, what is the…”
“Shine on your role”, Wuffe smiles as she helps the drummer remember another one of their songtitles. “We all have our own influences, we’re listening to our own music. Tehosekoitin is my favorite band”, she points at the band logo on her shirt, “and Krisu’s is Black Sabbath… and it’s totally different things. We have our common influences but we all bring our own stuff to the songs, so it’s a mix of genres. And we don’t like to put a label on it. We know we have to, so we use punk rock… it’s easier to tell someone something about music but still, we don’t want to restrict ourselves from anything.”
I had the feeling like you wouldn’t want to be labeled in any way. And… that’s a very rebellious thing to do!
The Feral Kids seem to be breaking out of all the comfortable pigeonholing of music genres, in their joy and passion for playing that goes far beyond conventions and patterns. You could say this way they’re bringing out the anarchy that, ironically, punk rock leans on.
“I think we started as a punk band.”, Renko says. “Because punk is so huge – there’s so many different styles in it. And we have influences from Stooges, MC5…”
“Sex pistols, Clash…”
“Ramones.”
What about Guns N’ Roses? Cause you mention them often as one of your main inspirations.
“Yeah… I don’t know if we have the skills to be like Guns N’ Roses, but that’s our goal!”, the guitarist comments. “And I don’t think that any of my favorite bands are like one genre of music. If you think about the Rolling Stones, they have everything on their record.”
“So why should we do anything else, like, we don’t wanna have any restrictions. The sky is the limit!”, Wuffe adds.
“We just play rock and roll.”
And speaking of “No wall”, when are you going to release the video?
“Oh, that’s over the summer.”
“But I can say… it’s gonna be really great!”, the drummer grins.
“We actually filmed it here. So it’s a playing video.”
“Yeah and it cost us like twenty five euros.”
“So low-budget”, Wuffe says. “But still…”
“high quality…”
“Shhh. Yeah, it was HIGH QUALITY.”
“We put all our money into that…”
“Actually no, the budget was 5 million… no, wait… 5 and a half!”, i hear the band members in the background laugh their heads off as Renko asks:
“You know the “November rain” video? [Guns N’ Roses] it’s the same… but different. Well, if the budget for “November rain” was 25 euros.” – he smiles and I get even more curious about the clip now. – “But we tried to capture our live energy with that video.”
The band members eventually agree for the official version of the clip’s budget to remain 5.4 million euros.
Do you by now have any favorite stories from the live gigs?
“I don’t know… but the weirdest places that we have played at are usually the best places.”
“Like last summer we played at a private party.”, Krisu starts. “It was funny because I was stuck with my cable, Rudy was behind his drums and Anti was with his mic and… Wuffe and Renko were running around the garden with the guitars, and they were playing.”
“I was playing”, the drummer adds, “and I was like… where the fuck is Mikko [Renko] and where the fuck is Wuffe?! i saw Anti and Krisu and we heard the guitar playing all the time, i was like, “where the fuck they are?”. The bandmates burst out in laughter.
Alright, imagine playing on stage and actually realizing half of your band just disappeared.
“And they were in someone’s garage, in the middle of this backyard…”, Anti tells me. “There were people sitting in a garden. So they went to play with them cause they couldn’t see us.”
“It was a sunny day and everybody wanted to be outside and our stage was inside. They didn’t come to us so we kept just running around”, Wuffe says.
The singer carries on:
“And the first gig that we ever played we were playing in the middle of nowhere, like and there was this abandoned, I don’t know… shop… in the middle of the fields and it was torn down from the inside…”
“It was like a shed.”
“And there were these hardcore punkrockers with mohawks sitting around everywhere.”
“My 9-year-old boy was my drum technician at that gig. It was really good!”
“It was fun, it went really well and people liked us.”, Krisu smiles.
“And they were drinking and making moonshine there, it was very strong… And bad-tasting!”
“Oh, it didn’t taste bad, come on!”, Wuffe laughs.
“But actually, the On the rocks gig was really good because last time we played there”, the drummer continues, “there were so many people. It did feel so good – like, when you are coming from the backstage, from the back of the drums, and you see that…”
“…there’s people!”, the singer chuckles.
As we keep talking about the fun that playing brings them and performing on stage, Wuffe mentions:
“And I think the main thing for us is… we really enjoy playing live and that’s the thing we want to do, we want to show it.”
“We are enjoying it on the stage. And we want people to see how we enjoy it.”, the bassist sums up as Rudy adds:
“…so that maybe a bit of that joy will stick to the audience also.”
I nod. That fits my impressions of the band’s performance so well.
Do you have any future plans for the live shows?
“Next week we got bar Loose. Then the summer is going to be more quiet. But in autumn we have a tour coming, a couple cities!”
“And in the summer there is time, at least for me, to write new songs.”, Renko mentions. “You can take an acoustic guitar and go outside. That’s always more inspiring than staying in the house or even going to the rehearsal place. I have this little travel acoustic guitar, I’ve travelled around Europe with it. I think I’ve made many songs with that guitar!”
Cool! Also – many other bands come on the stage to perform, to make this sort of a show where everything is planned. Meanwhile you go there to actually fully express yourselves. I really love the way you’re not restricting it to the stage only… you’re playing everywhere basically. And even the audience becomes a part of your show!
The band members agree that first Renko started going into the audience to play and later Wuffe joined him.
“There’s no stage big enough for Renko.”, Krisu comments.
“And Loose bar has that…That’s one funny thing from the gigs, like, every time we play in bar Loose…”
“Yeah every time I play in bar Loose, I hit my head on the speaker.”, Renko says.
“Because he’s so tall and the speaker is so low. And he’s going crazy and always hits his head on it.”
Let’s pretend that it’s already a part of the show’s script by now! – I smile. – Just maybe keep that in mind for the next Loose gig…
“He’s done it ten times and never remembered.”, the singer laughs.
And how did all of you start playing or singing? Was it something that you’ve always known you wanted to do or was it spontaneous and you suddenly realized you’re meant for that?
“Well… the first time I saw the live recording of AC/DC, live at Donington, when Angus comes on the stage and starts playing “Thunderstruck”, there’s like a massive crowd of people. That was the moment I realized that I wanted to play guitar.”, Renko takes a glimpse at his Les Paul. I suppose his thoughts wander away to rocking a stage.
“For me, it’s always been more about writing songs or stories and performing.”, Anti says. “Not so much about singing. and my story goes like 20 years back, i was studying and i knew that one dude in the city… one night he called me and: come and drink with us. They were drinking in a garage. I went there and sat down, they were playing and that friend of mine said: Anti, I didn’t ask you to come here to drink beer. Here’s the mic! That’s how I started.”
So you didn’t plan it by yourself.
“No. Since I was a little kid, I always liked to study lyrics from other bands. And see what the lyrics are about. I liked singers like Bon Scott [AC/DC] or Ville Valo [HIM] and Dio… like characters. So not much about singing. Maybe you can hear it.”
“Oh, come on!”, everyone says at the same time.
How about you guys?
“It was 36 years ago.”, Rudy starts his story. “I started with guitar but I was such a shitty player that I had to forget it! And my childhood friend got drums for Christmas. I was going to his place and playing drums for so long and I was like: wow, this is my instrument!”
Rudy indeed seems to have been born to be a rock and roll drummer.
“I asked my mother for five or six years, can you buy me drums, can you buy me drums…? and one Christmas I got the drums also! I was like, yeah! Now I can start my own band. And I’ve never taken technical lessons. I’m really shitty but…”
“NO!”, the bandmates say almost instantly. I chuckle as, in fact, Rudy is among the damn best drummers I’ve seen.
“Sounds like we all have some imposter kind of syndrome going on”, Wuffe laughs, “we all go like, I’m so shitty, I’m so shitty… oh, you’re not shitty, COME ON!”
I struggle to believe I have in front of myself five insanely talented players, none of whom seems to fully realize how impressive their skills are. Well, soon a growing fanbase will let them find out about it.
“Well yeah, I didn’t learn instruments when I was a child.”, the guitarist continues. “I went to music classes like singing and choirs… and at that time it wasn’t a thing for girls to play in a band or play band instruments. When I was a teenager I had a friend of mine, he played guitar. I was impressed. I was like: could I do that too? That looks so cool! And he introduced me to Guns N’ Roses, and I saw Slash, and I was like, I really need to do that!, and he just taught me the basics. That’s how it started, I was 16 or 17. And then we started our first band.”
“I’ve been living in a musical family.”, Krisu says. “My father was playing guitar and listening to the Rolling Stones and the Who. Then when I went to school, there came Kiss and W.A.S.P. and Black Sabbath. I was like wow, this is something that I need to do!”
“I remember that feeling!”, the drummer lights up.
I smile at the mention of Sabbath – the way Krisu on the stage resembles Geezer Butler is hard not to notice straight away.
“I was like 15 years old. We started our first punk band and I tried to play drums but… it didn’t go that well!”
So it was the exact opposite way that you two started playing your instruments! – I notice as Krisu and Rudy laugh.
“Yeah. So then I continued with guitar and later on changed to bass which I feel quite comfortable with at the moment but songwriting is still with a guitar… but im also, except from learning from my father, im self-taught.” the bass player comments.
“I think we all are.”
“I took some lessons when I started playing guitar but… I think I should have taken more.”, Renko humbly adds. [The guy who could literally teach advanced guitarists.]
I asked the band if there’s any particular era of music that, if they could, they’d take their band back in time to.
“Seventies!”
“No!”
“Yeah!”
You’d be way ahead of the time I feel.
“Not the seventies…! There ARE wrong answers, and that is one of them”, Wuffe chuckles. “Maybe in the 40s… they would be so shocked!”
“Before fucking Elvis and things like that.”
“Yeah, we invented rock and roll!”
“I think 70s… but it would be the best like the early 2000s.”
“I would like to play with Pelle Miljoona and Hanoi Rocks in the 80s in Helsinki…”, Anti adds as the bass player ponders:
“I think it’s a difficult question because… now at least we think we know what we are trying to do and what we want to be.”
“And if we went back to the 70s or 80s, there wouldn’t be so many bands…”
“…to steal music from.”, Renko jokes.
“GET INFLUENCES from.” – Wuffe laughs. “You know, maybe it’s a good time now because rock and roll, or punkrock, whatever, is not the mainstream right now. So in the early 2000s, 99 bands out of 100 would be some kind of rock. Well, not that much but still, this is what we want to do and we’re not, like, changing our music for what is mainstream right now.”
“So we are doing what we love to do.”
And how do you always come up with so many new ideas without repeating anything?
The Ferals’ limitless creativity is mindblowing. They seem to be so confident in their style, yet never falling into the trap of repeating melodies or patterns.
“Listening to really much music.”, Rudy replies. “At home I’m playing vinyls and listening to every kind of music, so we can steal, like Mikko [Renko] says, or like loan…”
“…take INFLUENCES!”
“And I think when we are here working on those songs, we all add our things to the sound. So they start to sound different than the original.”, the guitarist mentions.
“We do the Feral Kids sound.”
“The… Feral Kids treatment.”, Renko sums up.
“Yeah. No matter what kind of song I bring, it ends up being the Feral Kids song. And the same goes with everybody.”, Krisu says.
“Especially with “Soul too good”. It started quite differently.”
So how did it evolve?
“Well, it took a bit of time to accept that we were doing this kind of song. And it was quite a natural evolution. It’s all teamwork and so far the team has been working quite well… no major fights.”, Krisu laughs. “It’s always an exciting feeling to bring new ideas here – I may have been playing some of my ideas for 2 years in my bedside at home and then I come here, not sure if it’s the Feral Kids song but it… becomes the Feral Kids.”
I realize the time’s passed so quickly and we’ve been talking for more than an hour, so we’re finishing the interview.
“it’s been super hard to sit here being that close to the guitar and… not playing it”, Renko smiles.
“Yeah, can we play?”
I was given headphones and got to hear two of the Feral Kids’ new songs. This was the moment I saw the people I talked to become the ones I knew from the live videos, the… feral kids.
I see Krisu and Rudy exchanging a look and starting to deliver the rhythm section as if their minds were connected. And on the stage? They’re pure rebellion, bringing out chaos, breaking the order and creating the exciting sense of anarchy, yet filled with this great passion and fun they express in each sound.
Renko and Wuffe are in their world finally. I can feel the emotions they’re capturing in the riffs that flow from beneath their fingers so effortlessly. They both seem to really come to life on the stage, with the six strings in their hands. These two are one of the most mindblowing guitarist duos I’ve seen – they don’t just play music, they live it.
Then the Ferals’ singer steps in and tops up the entire show with the voice I could not mistake for any other. Anti is a truly charismatic leader. You couldn’t get your eyes off this guy on the stage.
For a few minutes time stops for me. They go crazy beyond control, the exact way a few minutes earlier we were all trying to hopelessly describe it with words. I hear some wildlife documentary narrator voice in my head, going: here, deep in the Finnish underground, we can see some feral kids in their natural habitat… and I can’t hold back a smile at this thought.
“Wow.” – is, oh how sophisticatedly, the only expression I’m able to describe the experience in, as the band stops playing and I take off the headphones. Although, I guess, you’ll get the point of what it really meant.
“Alright. Now we’ll kick you out.”, the Ferals’ singer says and we start laughing.
You know this theme where a character enters some surreal world, then wakes up and starts wondering if it was all real? Well, as I’m following Anti walking up the stairs, I can’t resist the impression that this entire talk happened in another dimension. I’m leaving the basement and have to squint as the sun shines on me again. Walking back into the same calm everyday reality of Helsinki city, I smile at my thoughts. I, again, pass by the same bar guests still sitting at the patio, I walk past pedestrians rushing in different directions… They’re all right above that basement, having no slightest idea that just a few metres away, in a world underneath the peaceful city, a new chapter of the story of rock and roll is being written. One based on a shared passion that never burns out.
Once in a while this group of friends meets up in that rehearsal room – leaving their jobs, families, everyday lives, to pursue a dream, to show the world who they really are through rock and roll. The Feral Kids are the ones to bring back faith in music. In new, yet-to-be-created melodies, in humans’ artistic creativity. They’re a gem of Finnish rock that is sure to soon take over the stages and win the hearts of rockers hungry for a genuine experience from a band that treats live performances not as a pattern to repeat but a space to truly express their real selves to the fullest, to find liberation in rock and roll and inspire fellow music lovers to do the same.
On Saturday, 6th June 2026 the Feral Kids are once again rocking the stage at bar Loose (yup, the same one with the low speaker. Heads up, Renko!)…
…and trust me – you don’t want to miss it!
