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DIABLA BAND PAGE
 DIABLA
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CURRENT NAME
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Diabla | |
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FORMER NAMES
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ORIGIN
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Norway | |
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STATUS
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Active | |
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FORMED IN
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LABEL
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Currently unsigned | |
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GENRE
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Hard rock | |
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STYLE
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LYRICAL THEME
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| BAND ADDED | 2004-03-31, 00:00 | |
| LAST UPDATE | 2007-06-16, 08:42 | |
Biography | Band members | Discography | Shows | Forum
| Band biography |
Meanwhile, Beathe Sanden (Thieves & Spies) also decides to start looking for a new band. She teams up with a female bass player at the Blitz house. Guitar player Odd Gunnar Frøysland contacts the girls, and they start jamming and rehearsing cover songs. The project turns out to be quite infertile, and the trio splits up amicably.
Beathe's search for a new band continues. Jens finds her ad in a local music store and contacts her. The chemistry turns out to be a disaster, and after a series of intrigues, Iver and Jens decide to kick Beathe out of the band. Tarald, Iver and Jens continue the project for a while, together with bass player Ronny Sveen (later Cybele), but eventually, Tarald quits due to the bad chemistry and frequent quarrels.
After a hellish break up with her boyfriend December 1996, Beathe had spent a long time sulking alone in her small flat. All this sulking, combined with the purchase of a four-track recorder, results in a demo containing acoustic songs.
Old aquaintances Odd Gunnar and Beathe meet coincidentially at a pub and Beathe starts talking about her new songs. Odd Gunnar says he wants to start a new musical project, and listens to Beathe's material at her home.
Odd Gunnar likes Beathe's recordings, and they decide to resume their musical project. Odd Gunnar contacts some of his friends and they start jamming and rehearsing various material. During this period, line-ups and practice locations change frequently.
Beathe bumps into former band colleague Tarald Lie at a TNT concert, and they exchange e-mail addresses. They are now both single and become romantically involved.
At this time, the drummer frequently fails to show up, and in desperate need of a new drummer, Beathe asks her boyfriend Tarald to step in temporarily. Not wanting their relationship to interfere with their musical careers, they are determined to find another drummer. At an early stage it becomes clear, however, that Tarald contributes immensely to the band's musical progress. The chemistry turns out to be good, and to their surprise, working together in a band is no problem.
The current bass player, heavily into jazz, decides to leave the band. The band puts up ads all over town. Morten Granheim (Amp 66 and later Sweet Mother of God ) from Gjøvik visits Oslo, and comes across the ad.
Morten picks up the phone, and plays his guts out at the following audition. His playing is excellent, and he joins the band on the spot. In addition, his mellow personality becomes a stabilizing factor.
The band now consists of Odd Gunnar Frøysland (guitar), Beathe Sanden (vocals), Tarald Lie (drums) and Morten Granheim (bass). It is called "Grain" for a while, but Beathe and Tarald are constantly nagging about changing the name into the raunchier "Groin". The repertoir consists of Beathe's and Odd Gunnar's songs, some older material from Tarald and Beathe's previous band, and Tarald's guitar riffs.
During a car trip to the inner depths of Telemark, Tarald and Beathe come up with the name "Diabla" . It is suggested to the other members, and everyone agrees.
They play their first gig at Chateau Neuf, presenting nine self-composed songs. The band's first demo is recorded on Beathe's four-track. It features the following songs: "Pamela", "Sweet Substitute", "Hide", "Day of Truth" and "The Killing Matter".
Beathe and Tarald's ideas tend to strive towards a more aggressive and broad-ranged musical direction, while Odd Gunnar wants to keep a more moderate approach. There are also disagreements concerning promotional methods, ambition and image development.
Wanting to shape Diabla's early aggressive tendencies into an overall rebellious attitude towards life, trends and certain social norms, Beathe increasingly disagrees with Odd Gunnar. Tarald also feels he has to suppress his urge for adding more aggressive touches to the music.
Adding to all this, Beathe and Odd Gunnar start to get on each other's nerves more and more often, finding it hard to communicate. Beathe announces that she plans to leave the band, and Tarald decides to follow. After a short period of quarrels and confrontations, the whole thing develops into Tarald, Beathe and Morten wanting to continue without Odd Gunnar.
Diabla had become a trio overnight, and after a while started looking for a new guitar player. Finding a new guitarist turned out to be a difficult task. Instead of paralyzing the band's activities, this situation actually (and surprisingly) provided the three remaining members with the necessary calm and tranquility to blossom creatively. Continual rehearsals and a common understanding of what direction(s) Diabla should follow, resulted in new songs and adjustments of the older material. Beathe is allowed to scream her frustrated lungs out, and Tarald speeds up his metal-inspired drumming. A web-based and more aggressive promotional campaign is initiated. Morten's talents and contributions blossom.
The three continue their search for a new guitar player, and after asking guitar teacher Frode Barth about tips on potential candidates, Barth decides to have a go himself. Diabla is flattered, and after a few jam sessions Diabla and Frode Barth agree on booking studio sessions at Is it Art studios in Sweden. The Diabla/Barth cooperation would shortly after turn out to be a total fuck-up. Disagreeing with Barth on almost everything, and Barth wanting to change most of the songs, Diabla decides to hire another guitar player just a few weeks before the planned recordings.
Having known about Carl August Tidemann (Tritonus, Arcturus and Winds) through mutual friends for several years, Diabla invites him to work on arranging new guitar parts for the songs. Being a technical genious, "Calle" learns the songs astonishingly fast. He is too busy with his own musical project, Tritonus, and too heavily into progressive hard rock to join the band permanently, but is hired for the upcoming studio sessions.
Morten, Tarald and Beathe drive off to the deep woods of neighboring country Sweden as planned. Tidemann joins Diabla for a day, and (in spite of a heavy case of the flu) nails down some amazing guitar tracks in less than fourteen hours... It is a fun trip for the band. Although relating to a totally different musical style, producers/sound engineers/musicians Peder Kjeldsby and Sjur Miljeteig (Folk & Røvere) are easy to work with. Mice, ghosts, the dark autumn forest, some delicious meals and a hazardous trip to the local store getting lost in the woods contributed to the great experience, which lasted four and a half days.
Four songs were recorded, of which the vocal track on "Still, Anyway, Somehow" was first take. The recordings were mastered at Strype studios back in Oslo. The members of Diabla were now totally broke... The official release of the four-track CD was therefore postponed.
Continually looking for a permanent guitar player, Diabla came across lots of interesting characters, to put it mildly. Among these was Marcus Paus. Starting out as a "fast guitar player" at age sixteen, he had turned into a highly creative and professional experimental composer. After two fun and inspirational jam sessions, there was some loose talk about Marcus joining Diabla for live gigs, since he didn't have time to rehearse with the band on a permanent basis. (He was busy composing classical works at the time...)
Furthermore, Diabla was looking for a permanent guitar player that felt closer to the more "traditional" way of acting out a rock'n roll attitude.
Stig Rolfsen spotted Diabla's bold ad in a music store, and showed up for an audition, after listening to the four-track recording. Stig said he was into effects and moods. The whole band appreciated his versatile and dynamic playing style, assuming he would fit into Diabla's vision of the ideal guitar player.
Many of the guitarists the band had been in contact with before Stig showed up, were either unable to look beyond the eighties' style, or hated it intensely. There were no in-betweens, and this was a problem for Diabla.
Inspired by lots of different styles (pop, grunge, punk, classic rock and even ethnic music) as well as the eighties' hard rock and metal scene, the band wanted to consolidate their own style. One of Diabla's inspirational factors, the eighties' heritage, was extremely out of fashion. However, Diabla didn't want to deal with the tiresome and cynical (and typically Norwegian) discussion of whether or not the eighties' heritage is a load of crap, at least not within the context of Diabla as a band. Keeping an open and honest approach to music, Diabla was looking for an open-minded person with a modern approach, although not too heavily branded by the nineties' ironical/cynical views on the eighties' heritage.
Stig appeared to be easier to deal with in this respect.
After having played just one gig with Diabla, keyboard player Lasse Finbråten (Tritonus), who joined the band shortly after Stig, left, claiming to be too busy with other projects. Diabla's current and final line-up (Beathe/Tarald/ Morten/Stig) was to be consolidated in the time to come.
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