As the UK is preparing itself for the arrival of Lordi for Download, and the release of their Eurovision winning song at the start of June, their lives in Finland have been turned upside down over the past week.
A section of Helsinki was shut to allow 80,000 people to attend a party to mark the band's success in the contest, and the president presented them with an award for promoting local music. National pride which makes the hysteria and outrage which split the nation when the band were announced as the representative seem a long way off – how times change!
Meanwhile a local gossip magazine has angered fans of Lordi by publishing pictures of the band's singer without his trademark mask and make up.
The reaction among heavy metal fans and others to this action has been swift and overwhelmingly negative. The message board for the magazine was filled on Wednesday with angry responses from LORDI devotees. As well as this, a number of others declared they were not in fact active fans of the band, but wanted to voice their disgust at this intrusion. An Internet petition calling for a boycott of the magazine had been signed by more than 180,000 by midnight on Thursday night, according to the person who started it.