One night in march 1997 two men were sleeping in a rehearsal room in Helsinki. The other woke up and started playing the keyboards and came up with a folkish melody. Soon the other one woke up too. Liking the melody he asked the other guy to play the riff in traditional finnish "humppa" style (humppa is a variety of polka...). This sounded very mean and guitars and brutal vocals were added immediatly. Thus Finntroll was born..
These two very drunk founding fathers were Somnium (ex-Thy Serpent, Impaled Nazarene) and Katla. Almost a year later in January Finntroll recorded their debut demo "rivfader". They were still using drummachine but were already discussing a future adding of other members at least for session musicanship. Soon several musicians stepped into the picture. Drummer B. Dominator (Barathrum, Rapture), Skrymer on live guitars, Trollhorn (Moonsorrow) on keyboards and Tundra on bass. Spikefarm had shown interest in the band and now that Finntroll was a band with several strong musicians the deal was sealed. So there you had it, the record that probably affected the black and folk metal scene for good. The debut album "Midnattens Widunder" contains nine tracks of advanced trollish metal. At last the Finntroll woke up from its long sleep to strike down the followers of the christian plague...
About a year after that, it was the time to take the next step in this trollish crusade and Walltone Studios were once again inhabited by Finntroll. This time the guys knew better what they wanted to do and the session went smoothly and without any problems they encountered on the first trip. The result was an album called "Jaktens Tid". With this album Finntroll took a huge step forward both musically and in overall atmosphere. At last they could say that this was how they wanted to sound like. The album got great reviews all over the world and was praised by countless of people. Finntroll was stronger that ever before. The album managed to climb to 20th place in the Finnish album charts, surprising both band and the label. Soon after that Century Media was attracted by this success and licensed the album for the rest of the world. On that summer Finntroll played in several open-airs both in Finland and abroad.
Beginning from the year 2002 the band hit a string of bad luck, beginning from cancellations of some tours, continuing with the vocalist Katla's worsening throat problems which finally lead to his early retirement from the band. Several shows were made with replacing singers, Tommy Aberg of Bloodshed, Pete Eskelinen of Rapture and Mika Luttinen of Impaled Nazarene. In January 2003 the band realized a long planned project, an acoustic/experimental cd "Visor Om Slutet" with Katla and the new vocalist Wilska (Sethian, ex-Wizzard, ex-Nattvindens Grat to name a few...) sharing the vocal duties. The album was recorded at a cabin in the woods on the outskirts of Helsinki, with the aid of a mobile studio, sauna and large quantities of alcohol. It was released as a mid-price album, and surprisingly inhabited the no. 1 place of the Finnish Midprice chart for several weeks...
Just before the release of this record, the band met with a heart-breaking blow; The death of Teemu "Somnium" Raimoranta in an alcohol related accident in Helsinki. While recovering from the loss of a dear friend and bandmate the rest decided that ending the band would be an insult to his memory, and decided to honour and grieve him the best way they could, by going on tour and keeping his music alive. The band did a two week European tour in support of Katatonia, and brought in an old member of the family, guitarist Routa who had earlier played some gigs as a stand-in guitarist in Finntroll. During the summer the members spent a lot of time on the road, playing festivals like Graspop in Belgium, The Vienna Metal Fest and Sweden Rock.
In the fall of 2003 the band barricaded themselves once again at Walltone Studios, recording 14 new songs. An EP and a full-length CD are to be released in the spring of 2004, along with the band's first video. The new material captures the essence of Finntroll, raw, epic, melodic in all it's glory, combining elements of metal, folk, punk, humppa mixed to a trollish beat.
We who have the icecold trollblood are here to stay... |
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