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.These two
drunken fellows were Somnium and Katla. Thus Finntroll was born...
Almost a year later in January Finntroll recorded their debut demo
"rivfader" .Soon several musicians stepped into the picture. Drummer B.
Dominator (Barathrum, Rapture), Skrymer on 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.
The debut album "Midnattens Widunder" contains nine tracks of advanced
trollish metal. At last the Finntroll has woken 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
athmosphere. 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. The best performance was probably seen in Wacken Open Air,
where they were actually asked by the organizers to play another show
next day! Unfortunately Trollhorn had returned back to Finland and they
were unable to do it. In the autumn they were supposed to start their
first European tour, but were forced to cancel it due the severe loss of
Katla's voice. Band was struggling on despite the unfortunate loss of
Katla's voice. He went through several surgical operations in hope of
restoring his voice. At first it seemed that Katla would get his voice
back if given enough time to rest. Band was hoping for all the best and
waited for Katla's voice to get better. But even when he had gone through
many operations, and tried other numerous methods for curing his voice,
it didn't helped. He felt better to step down from a vocalist's
position and let the band move on. The third Album was called " Visor o!
m Slutet ". Vocal's were taken over by band's friend Tapio Wilska.
Katla was also making his appearances on this experimental acoustic album,
as for an farewell for all the friends and fans.
After the release of the " Visor om Slutet " on 24th April 2003, band
was facing another even more tragid accident. Our dear friend Teemu "
Somnium " Raimoranta died on 16th March 2003 at the exceptionally young
age of just 25. He suffered fatal injuries from a fall off Helsinki's
Pitkäsilta bridge onto ice below. This was a really hard blow for
everybody in a band and for close friends of the band.
At this point band was ready to quit as it seemed that bad karma was
just too strong over the band. But Finntroll decided, as for honouring
Teemu's memory and his parent's wishes, to continue the saga. Finntroll
hit on their very first European tour as an support act with KATATONIA.
Teemu's place was taken over by an long time friend of the band, Mikael
Karlbom, who had also act as an step-in guitarist for Finntroll before.
Next fall after the tour, band locked themselves into Walltone studios
to record band's forth Album "Nattfödd ". It was released sometime in
spring´04 with the EP "Trollhammaren". Shortly after the release of the
album the band got their first headline tour. Supporting acts were
Ensiferum and The Wake. Finntroll also unleashed their very first music
video, suprisingly... "Trollhammaren" which was played across the europe
and got really good feedback all over. After that band has concentrated
more on doing shows across the europe, and are waiting the possibility
to punish the other continents as well.
There is not yet any dates when Finntroll will hit the studio to record
the next full-lenght, but probably sometime during the 2005-2105.
Rot 'n' Troll.
In late January 2006 lead singer Tapio Wilska was fired by the band.