One night in March 1997, two men were sleeping in a rehearsal room in Helsinki. One of them woke up and started playing the keyboards and came up with a folkish melody. Soon the other woke up too. He liked the melody and asked the first guy to play the riff in the traditional Finnish "humppa" style (humppa is a variety of polka). This sounded very mean, and guitars and brutal vocals were added immediately. That’s the way Finntroll was born…
These two drunken founding fathers were Somnium (ex-Thy Serpent, Impaled Nazarene) and Katla. Almost a year afterwards, in January 1998, Finntroll recorded their debut demo “Rivfader". They were still using a drum-machine, but were already thinking about adding some other members to the band, which soon happened. Drummer B. Dominator (Barathrum, Rapture, Shape Of Despair), guitarist Skrymer, keyboardist Trollhorn (Moonsorrow) and bassist Tundra joined Finntroll. Spikefarm label got interested in the new band, and they signed a deal resulting in the release of the band’s debut album, "Midnattens Widunder", which would influence the future of black and folk metal scene.
A year afterwards, they took another step in their trollish crusade and Walltone Studios got once again inhabited by Finntroll. This time the guys knew exactly what they wanted and the sessions went smoothly. The result was an album called "Jaktens Tid", a huge step forward for the band. The album earned great critical and public acclaim all over the world. Finntroll were stronger than ever before. The record managed to reach #20 on the Finnish album charts to the surprise of both the band and the label. Soon afterwards, Century Media licensed the album for the rest of the world.
2002 brought the band a spell of bad luck starting from cancellations of some tours and continuing with the band’s vocalist Katla’s worsening throat problems, which finally lead to his early retirement from the band. Finntroll played a couple of shows with replacement singers, Tommy Еberg of Bloodshed, Pete Eskelinen of Rapture and Mika Luttinen of Impaled Nazarene.
In January 2003, the band realized their long-planned project – an experimental acoustic CD called “Visor Om Slutet” with Katla and the new vocalist Wilska (Sethian, ex-Wizzard, and ex-Nattvindens Grеt among others) sharing the vocal duties. The album was recorded at a cabin in the woods on the outskirts of Helsinki, with the help of a mobile studio, sauna and lots of alcohol. It was released as a mid-price album, and surprisingly stayed at #1 of the Finnish chart for several weeks. Just before the release of this record, the band had met tragedy – the death of Teemu "Somnium" Raimoranta in an alcohol-related accident in Helsinki.
While recovering from the loss, the rest of the band found that ending the band would be an insult to their bandmate’s memory and decided to pay their final respects to him by playing new gigs and keeping his music alive. The band did a two-week European tour as a support act for Katatonia, and brought guitarist Routa in the line-up, “an old member of the family”, who had earlier played some gigs as a stand-in guitarist with Finntroll. In the summer of 2003, Finntroll spent a lot of time on the road, playing at such festivals as Graspop in Belgium, The Vienna Metal Fest and Sweden Rock.
Their fourth concept album, "Ur Jordens Djup" (From the Depths of the Earth) was recorded at Sonic Pump Studios with Nino Laurenne (Ensiferum, Kiuas, Thunderstone) in October 2006. Produced by Trollhorn and Tundra, this album delivers quite a unique amalgam of black metal, folk music, punk, and god-knows-what, ranging from epic classical symphonies to sheer merengue, mixed with desperate brutality and a hint of pure madness… plus their signature creative songwriting.
In late July of this year, Finntroll started recording their fifth album, yet untitled! But this surely won’t stop them from playing a lot of terrific gigs, including the coming one at B1 MAXIMUM on November 19.