Amorphis is a Finnish progressive/melodic metal band, and formerly death/doom band started by Jan Rechberger, Tomi Koivusaari and Esa Holopainen in Helsinki, Finland in 1990. Amorphis absorbed and incorporated influences from many metal genres, and with time passing their sound evolved dramatically. Initially, the band was a Death Metal act, but with time they have evolved into making music that is more classifiable as Doom Metal with folk influences, and, more recently, Progressive Metal and Hard Rock, utilizing increasingly complex arrangements and a less brutal sound. Amorphis is also well known for their use of the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, as a source for their lyrics. In 1989 Jan Rechberger and Esa Holopainen played in a speed metal band Violent Solution, which Tomi Koivusaari had left the previous year to form the death metal band Abhorrence. Violent Solution slowly withered away as the musicians became interested in other things and styles of music. At this point, Jan Rechberger and Esa Holopainen had the idea of putting together a death metal band. In early 1990, Tomi Koivusaari was asked to be the vocalist and Oppu Laine to be their bassist. During that time the band asked Tomi to pick up the slot of rhythm guitarist as well as singing, which led to the band dumping all original compositions and starting again. With the band starting to move along, Tomi's other band (Abhorrence) split up and he found himself with much more time to put into Amorphis. The band went into gear and started churning out new brutal music. Shortly after the band had recorded their first studio demo tape, Tomi got a letter from Relapse Records offering Abhorrence a recording contract. Since Abhorrence was no longer active, they quickly sent their own demo in the return mail and eventually got signed to a recording deal. The deal would later almost destroy the band, due a very long commitment and poor artist relations. They quickly released a death metal classic Karelian Isthmus and would later release the original demo as the Privilege Of Evil EP. The EP featured Abhorrence's original vocalist, Jukka Kolehmainen, as a vocalist on the Abhorrence cover song Vulgar Necrolatry. The band quickly adopted new ways of making music and started incorporating different styles in with the original death metal aspect, creating a very unique and complex soundscape. Their musical growth has not stopped and the band consistently strives to excel in the creativity and unique soundscapes which has always been the band's backbone. Eclipse, is the result of this uncompromising attitude and while the band sheds their musical skin, the fans can rest assured that the direction of the music is still in the same distant horizon as it was when they went in to studio to records Tales from the Thousand Lakes. Amorphis' eighth release was Silent Waters, which was released in 2007 and continued in similiar vein with Eclipse. Again based on Kalevala, the album tells the story of Lemminkäinen. Skyforger was released in May 27 2009, and it contains 10 songs. The digipack version has one bonus song; Godlike Machine. Forging The Land Of Thousand Lakes was released in July 2010. It is available as a 2 DVD & 2 CD package (2 digipacks in a box) or as a 2 DVD set. DVD 1, and the CDs, contain a live concert in Oulu (Finland) in 2009. The second DVD contains a shorter set from Summer Breeze Open Air 2009, a 60 minute documentary and all (most?) Amorphis videos plus a photo gallery. Magic & Mayhem – Tales From The Early Years was released in September 2010. It contains 12 tracks from the first three albums plus a bonus track Light My Fire. They have all been re-recorded with the current line up. Some arrangements have changed - essentially they are the songs as they have evolved through many concert tours, recorded in a studio environment. In May 2011, The Beginning Of Times was released and went straight to number 1 in the Finnish album charts and number 16 in the German charts. Current Members * Tomi Joutsen – vocals * Esa Holopainen – guitar * Tomi Koivusaari – guitar * Niclas Etelävuori – bass * Santeri Kallio – keyboards * Jan Rechberger – drums Former Members * Pasi Koskinen – vocals (1996–2004) * Olli-Pekka Laine – bass (1990–2000) * Pekka Kasari – drums (1996–2002) * Kim Rantala – keyboards (1996–1998) * Kasper Mårtenson – keyboards (1993–1994) Discography: 1992 The Karelian Isthmus 1994 Tales from the Thousand Lakes 1996 Elegy 1999 Tuonela 2001 Am Universum 2003 Far From the Sun 2006 Eclipse 2007 Silent Waters 2009 Skyforger 2010 Forging The Land Of Thousand Lakes 2010 Magic & Mayhem – Tales From The Early Years 2011 The Beginning Of Times Official site: Amorphis.net Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

Soilwork is a Swedish melodic death metal band formed in late 1995, originally under the name Inferior Breed in Helsingborg, Sweden. In 1996, they changed their name to Soilwork to better fit their new sound. Their unique sound is a fusion of the classic Gothenburg metal sound with power-groove riffs of late 1970s, early 1980s British, and European metal, but in their most recent albums they have also introduced elements from American Alternative metal and adopted a more melodic attitude. Their most recent work has more singing and lighter melodies than their earlier work, as well as a more polished production that brings out the strength of the drums. Stabbing the Drama (2005) In 2005, the band began to gain minor commercial success in the United States. Stabbing the Drama reached #12 and #21 on the Billboard Heatseeker and Independent album charts, respectively. They played the 2005 Ozzfest alongside Gothenburg melodic death metal band In Flames. In late 2005, guitarist Peter Wichers left the band due to tour exhaustion and other personal issues. Wichers now does music production for other bands. Of all the line-up changes with Soilwork, this one comes as the biggest and most disappointing to Soilwork fans, as Wichers was a very important member of the band and has a style of guitar-playing that many believe cannot be duplicated. As of February 4th, 2007, Soilwork were in search for a new guitarist living in Sweden. On the tours in 2006 they were using Andreas Holma (ex-Hypocrisy) as a short-term replacement. After their 2006 U.S. tour, they planned to choose one of the guitarists they had been touring with. On February 17th, the band announced while performing at the House of Metal Festival in Umeå that Daniel Antonsson was the permanent new guitarist. Sworn to a Great Divide (2007) Soilwork's seventh studio album, Sworn to a Great Divide, was released on the 19th of October 2007 through Nuclear Blast. 2008 has seen the departure of longtime guitarist Ola Frenning and the return of his nephew, Peter Wichers, to the band. Daniel Antonsson departed from the band upon Peter's rejoining. The band has also added Sylvain Coudret of the band Scarve to it's lineup as second guitarist. The Panic Broadcast (2010) The band returned to the studio in early 2010 to write and record their eighth album, Speed announced on January 22, 2010 in a MySpace bulletin that the new album would be entitled The Panic Broadcast. The album was released on July 2nd in Europe, and on July 13th in North America. According to Nielsen SoundScan, The Panic Broadcast sold around 5,257 copies in its first week of sales in the United States. The album debuted at #88 on the Billboard 200 chart, making it their highest charting album in their entire career. The band just finished their touring of North America in the Panic Over North America tour promoting it's new album with Death Angel, Augury, Mutiny Within, and Swashbuckle. Soilwork announced on June 26, 2012 that Peter Wichers has left Soilwork for the second time. Following the departure, Peter was replaced by David Andersson. The Living Infinite (2013) Strid began to think of the band's next album as a double album during a 2011 tour. He wanted to challenge himself, instead of releasing a single album after Wicher's departure. He also wanted to show that the band could release a great album with one of their main composers gone. He wrote two songs by the end of the year, and began writing with the band in March 2012. Soilwork announced they would begin recording August 23, 2012. The album was released February 27, 2013 in Asia, March 1 in Europe, March 4 in the UK and March 5th in North America. Beyond the Infinite (2014) The band still had more material left over from writing the Living Infinite, and planned on releasing the extra tracks later on. It was later revealed that the 5 extra tracks would be put into an Asia exclusive EP release. Soilwork released Beyond the Infinite on September 24, 2014. The Ride Majestic (2015) On December 5, 2014, Soilwork frontman Strid confirmed that work had begun on a new album when he posted a picture on Facebook of him listening to new demos. Strid also stated that Soilwork are sounding "better than ever." It was also confirmed that Soilwork has teamed up with Testament frontman Chuck Billy's Breaking Bands LLC management company for the album. Soilwork will accompany Soulfly on their 2015 We Sold Our Souls To Metal Tour. Decapitated and Shattered Sun will also join the tour. The tour is scheduled for a 27 concert trek starting on September 30 and ending in Albuquerque, NM on October 30. In June 2015, Soilwork announced that longtime bassist Ola Flink and the band had parted ways and that he would be replaced by new bassist Markus Wibom. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

There are two artists of the same name: JINJER - a pop-grop. JINJER is an Ukrainian groove metal band formed in 2009. 2009 - 2012 Once at the very beginning of their way in their hometown somebody said behind their backs : Won't go further than local gigs! Only pathos and crabs! Today JINJER are one of the best metal bands in Ukraine with wide popularity both in the motherland, all around Europe, and even overseas. De facto the band was formed in 2009 and right of the bat they released a promo-EP. However, it isn't really clear if we can call that line-up a real JINJER band. There was a guy, Max, on vocals. He emigrated to the states right after the demo-release. And generally there was only one person remained from that line-up – a band-founder, Dmitriy Oksen. Probably the real starting point for the band was when Tatiana Shmailyuk replaced the previous vocalist. It is interesting that originally Tatiana didn't want to stay for long in the band, so to say she decided to help friends just for a while. But as it often happens the temporary turns into the permanent. Almost at the same time Roman Ibramkhalilov joined the band too, the guitarist whose talent and skills would become one of the basics of the band's sound. In 2010 JINJER recorded and released on the Internet two singles with Tatiana's vocals and the band finally started to gain first fans and popularity, though only locally yet. Same time they received their first invitations to play in the regional center of Donetsk and other towns around it. But till the summer of 2011 the band couldn't get a stable and ready-to-work line up. After Eugene Abdiukhanov (a-k Kostyuk) joining the band, he also took in charge of band's management and promotion, JINJER at last began their way to “wide popularity” on the underground metal stage of Ukraine. The year 2012 started with the victory in a MUZTORG challenge (a huge international music store chain organizes a competition for all-genres bands). It's funny that JINJER won a chance to record an album for free at a studio which had never recorded anything heavier than pop, so the bad has never used that change, perhaps for the better. Also at the beginning of the year the band released on the Internet a new EP – INHALE. DO NOT BREATHE, and their first official video – Exposed as a Liar. The video blew up the Ukrainian metal stage. The live show schedule was getting tighter and tighter and the top-point of the band's concert activity was performances at Loadfest 1.0 in Lviv and in BINGO club in Novermber 2012 where JINJER filmed a new video for SCISSORS song. It must be noted that for the whole year the band was touring exceptionally on their own costs paying for transport, accommodation and catering themselves, but no obstacles could stop the musicians on their way success. At the end of 2012 a Greek label – the Leaders Rec., contacted and offered JINJER to release INHALE. DO NOT BREATHE officially. The release was strengthened with a few more songs and bonus later on was brought out by the Greek label as full-length album. At the same time the band was found by a booking agency from Romania, Cavaleria Events, they offered JINJER a tour around Romania and Moldova. 2013 2013 started with the tour of 15 shows around Ukraine, Moldova and Romania. The culmination was in Kiev where JINJER shared the stage with CALIBAN from Germany. But one month before the beginning of the tour the band was to go through a hard challenge. The drummer, Aleksander Koziychuk, refused to go on the tour for some family reasons and circumstances. The tour was about to fail. Next morning, Eugene Mantulin, who had previously played with Kostyuk in other bands responded to JINJER's call to work as a session drummer. This undoubtedly talented musician and a wonderful person managed to learn 11 songs of JINJER in a month. They went on the tour but came back home as an absolutely different band, with clear goals and plans. Mantulin remained in the line-up permanently. The international tour made promoters, metal audience and other Ukrainian bands take JINJER seriously. At the end of the Spring the band released a new lyric-video and single NO HOARD OF VALUE which marked out some certain stylistic changes. The band made a bet on more complicated instrumental parts and structure of songs. Stylistically JINJER moved from dogmas of metalcore to groove metal, progressive and episodically even death metal. During the summer 2013 the band performed at open-air festivals. The performance at Rock'n'Sich festival on the same stage with TIAMAT and PAIN must be marked out. JINJER first time in their career gathered several thousands of metal fans under the stage making them slam, mosh and headbang like the last time in their life. Approximately same time JINJER got the invitation to take part in the first metal challenge in Ukraine – the Best Ukrainian Metal Act 2013, which was to take place in October 2013. According to the regulations band for the contest were chosen by a jury – the most prominent Ukrainian promoters in the sphere of heavy music, but a winner was chosen by audience voting. JINJER understood that they had no chances to win as the other contestants were local Kiev bands with at least 10 years experience with much bigger fan-support in the capital of Ukraine. However the band accepted the challenge and went to the capital just to play a good show. On the way to Kiev something terrible happened. That could put a full stop not only in their career but also in the musicians' lives. One day before the contest late at night JINJER got into an awful traffic accident and fell into 4 meter-deep ditch. Only by a lucky fortune nobody hurt seriously and the band's van got only a broken radiator and bumper. Having mustered up all their will, courage and strength, and money too, the band fixed the van at the closest service station and next day arrived exactly for the soundcheck. Eventually JINJER was voted to be the Best Ukrainian Metal Act of 2013. The rest of the year spent at the studio composing and recording their next full-length album – CLOUD FACTORY. 2014 2014 started with a release of a lead-single from the upcoming album. A video for CLOUD FACTORY repeated the success of its forerunner two years before. Then the band performed at BIG LOVE FEST where JINJER confirmed the status of the leaders of Ukrainian metal stage. CLOUD FACTORY album was released at the Leaders Rec. in March 2014 and to support the album JINJER set off to a one-month tour around Europe playing gigs in Poland, Germany, Czech, Belgium, France and Switzerland. In the summer of 2014 due to tragic events in native Donbass (East of Ukraine, civil war between separatists supported by Russia and Ukrainian governmental forces) the band had to move to Lviv breaking all stereotypes about disaffection between the west and the east in Ukraine. In 2014 JINJER joined the line-up of absolutely all open-air festivals in Ukraine, including the biggest fest – Zaxid Fest, where the band again gathered several thousands of metalheads under the stage, making EKTOMORF, who were the headliner of the night, feel nervous. After a few weeks JINJER played at Bucovina Rock Castle festival in Romania where they shared the stage with such legends as NAZARETH and DOG EAT DOG. One month later JINJER went through a tragedy which shocked not only fans and musicians of Ukrainian metal scene, but also people were not connected with either with the band or heavy music in general. JINJER were at their close friend in Kiev, having rest on their way to Russia where they were supposed to play a couple of shows. Everyone was asleep when Eugene Mantulin went to smoke in the kitchen. He sat on the widow, napped and fell off the third floor down. Only because of the unity of musicians, fans, people who were not indifferent, they managed to collect a sum necessary for an urgent operation and thus save Mantulin's life and give hime a chance to walk and play the drums in the Future. The band had to cancel a large tour around Europe and Great Britain. At some point the Future of JINJER was unclear and doubtful. After a while, getting off the stress the band decided to look for a substitution for the drums. The task itself was incredibly difficult as Mantulin was definitely one of the best young drummers in Ukraine, there weren't many people who could play his lines, and there were even less who could accept a life style of a professional musician in heavy metal. JINJER chose a young and perspective fellow whose name is Dmitriy Kim. The band knew the guy since they recorded at Beast Rec. studio in Gorlovka, where the new drummer had worked as a sound-engineer. Without any hesitations Dmitriy moved to Lviv, settled with the others at their country house and started to learn songs. Same as Mantulin he managed to take over 11 songs in a month. On November 8th JINJER were playing at LOADFEST III in Lviv and next day they set off to a 17-day tour around Ukraine, Russia and Romania. At the end of 2014 JINJER released on their official youtube channel their first official live-bootleg – the performance at FajtFest in Czech which took place in June 2014. Following this the band released an official tour video for a song «Желаю — значит получу» which summarized all concert activity for the whole year. Also on December 23rd Eugene Kostyuk, the bassist, became the first father in the band, he and his wife had a baby-son. In 2014 Ukrainian and foreign music editions gave a lot of their attention to JINJER. Thus European magazines, e.g. The Legacy, Metal Hammer and Rock Hard, reviewed and gave high scores to CLOUD FACTORY album in the same line with international stars' albums. Ukrainian editions summing up the year recognized JINJER as one of the brightest Ukrainian bands and Tatiana joined the top of 10 best young Ukrainian singers of all genres. In Ukraine CLOUD FACTORY album joined the top 20 albums of 2014, the only metal album among pop and indie bands. 2015 In the beginning of 2015 JINJER went on a short mini-tour around Russia. Its top-point was the performance at the biggest anniversary in-door festival in Russia – STARS FUCTORY festival, which was held in two largest cities – Moscow and St. Petersburg. JINJER were accepted very warmly by the audience despite all the political and military tensions between the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Critics in Russia claimed JINJER to be a real discovery of the festival and a new wave of Eastern-European metal music. The band proved that true metalheads stay unite in all situations regardless borders, geopolitics and other bullshit. However, after getting back home JINJER received a lot of criticism from ultra-nationalistic movements, the band even was threatened several times, a few concerts later on were almost canceled due to attacks and threats by nazi and fashistic groups. Fortunately thanks to huge fan support and also support by the biggest Ukrainian festivals JINJER managed to avoid the real troubles and violence. Anyway the band remains under the target of marginal right-wing elements, and a victim of the fox hunt in Ukraine. In February 2015, JINJER had to go through another obstacle. Preparing for the Spring OUTLANDER TOUR around the EU, band-members applied for Greek Schengen visas. Even though the band had all necessary documents and invitations provided by the Leaders Records label located in Greece, all five of JINJER got a refusal. For this reason they had to postpone the Polish part of the tour to mid May. Only with the great assistance and understanding by the Polish Consulate JINJER managed to get Polish visas and be ready for the middle of March to tour around Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Czech, Slovakia, Italy, Austria and Switzerland. It has to be noted the tour had both positive and negative sides. Apart from awesome shows and full clubs everywhere, the band had a wonderful chance to check out such fascinating sights as Parthenon in Athens, Coliseum in Rome and many more. On the the other hand every band-member got ill at least once on the tour. Some had a fever of 40 degrees. Nevertheless they had to play shows almost everyday. After one month and 25 shows the band got back to Ukraine. In the end of April JINJER made their first exclusive full-time show in Kiev, Sentrum Club. The performance was caught on cameras and recorded live. It would be released as the band's debut official DVD entitled CROWD FACTORY in the beginning of 2016. Originally the band was about to release the DVD in the Autumn of 2015, but due a number of technical problems appeared on the production line, it had to be postponed several times. This DVD would be the last release with the Greek Leaders Records for the band. At the end of Spring 2015, JINJER traveled to Germany to participate at OPEN AIR am BERG festival. It opened the season of open-airs for JINJER. In total the band performed at 7 festivals during the summer season 2015 in Poland, Germany, Romania, Albania and Ukraine sharing the stage with At the Gates, Marduk at RockStadt Fest, being a co-headliner for Kreator at Zaxid Fest. But in the middle of the summer, after the performance at the Black Sea Festival the guitarist Dimitriy Oksen shocked the band with his decision to leave JINJER. It was absolutely unexpected, there was no hint or sign for this, but the original founder of JINJER left and actually gave up music. As he claimed in his farewell note for the fans: “I would like to devote time and efforts to some more of my dreams and ambitions”. The rest of the shows in 2015 JINJER played in four. The band at first tried to look for a substitution, but after a while they took a decision to stay a 4-piece band. The main reasons for that were that first of all it was rather difficult to find a guitarist with appropriate technical skills and charisma, but also that no-one could understand what it means to be on long tours and live a life of a musician in the modern world. So at lest temporarily JINJER decided not to look for a new member. Next day after performing at Respublika Festival in September, the band went to the city of Lutsk to film a brand new video for a new song entitled Sit Stay Roll Over. The audio for the song was recorded in the late August at Morton Studio in Kiev. At first the band planned to bring it out as an opening single for the upcoming EP, scheduled for late Autumn. But a couple of weeks after the new video-clip was out in October 2015, when it gained more than 100 000 in the first seven days, JINJER got an offer from one of the most influential metal labels in the world – NAPALM RECORDS. After two month of negotiating and at least 10 offers from other labels from all over the world JINJER signed a worldwide record deal with and joined the family of Napalm Records. It brought some changes to the band's plans. JINJER had to cancel the EP release and started preparing material for their new album "King of Everything" to be released in 2016. LINE-UP: Tatiana Shmailyuk - vocals Roman Ibramkhalilov - guitar Eugene Abdiukhanov - bass-guitar Dmitriy Kim - drums Links: http://www.jinjer-metalband.com/about http://www.facebook.com/JinjerOfficial http://vk.com/jinjer_metal http://www.youtube.com/user/dmitriyoksen http://jinjer.bandcamp.com

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Nailed to Obscurity is a death doom metal band from Esens, Lower Saxony, Germany. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.