The monster-heavy band Lordi with its Hard Rock Hallelujah will represent Finland in the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest to be held in Athens on May 18th to 20th.
Lordi's song gathered over 67,000 phone and SMS votes, accounting for over 42 percent of all the votes in Friday night’s national final, which was held in Turku and televised by YLE. Tomi Metsäketo’s Italian-language Eternamente Maria finished second, after receiving 29 percent of the votes, and Annika Eklund’sShanghain valot ("Shanghai Lights”) was third with slightly over 12 percent of all votes.
The total number of votes cast in the final round, when six of the original twelve entries fought it out, was around 160,000.
A more extensive piece on Lordi will appear among our weekly articles on Tuesday.
