The front of the Helsinki Railway Station is swarming with people on a misty Friday morning. Most faces are glued to their smartphones. Others walk with tunnel vision—with one goal only: to make it to the bus and work.
I pull out my camera and start shooting. People are stopping now. They are looking where my lens is pointing: at the huge statues, the Lantern Carriers by sculptor Emil Wikström, designed in 1914. “They look like the band members of Kiss,” one woman in her 50’s utters to her friend. The woman is right.
At the break of the dawn, the state-owned railway company, VR, had the faces of the “stone men” covered in big masks of the Demon, Starchild, Spaceman and Catman—the members of the iconic American hard rock group, Kiss!
But why? Because the group that saw the height of its popularity in the 1970s and ’80s will take over the Helsinki Arena on May 4.
According to VR, the “stone men” perfectly embody the spirit of Kiss.
They are, after all, the men of rock.
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