Turisas
Turisas is a Finnish metal band from Hämeenlinna. They were founded in 1997 by Mathias Nygård and Jussi Wickström, named after an ancient Finnish god of war. Turisas are a folk metal band, incorporating elements of power metal and symphonic metal along with frequent harsh vocals. Turisas is known to play most of their solos on electric violin, as opposed to traditional guitar solos. Since 2003, Turisas have been signed to Century Media records, which released their debut album Battle Metal in 2004; the band went on a European tour with various guest musicians on instruments such as violins and accordions. On 28 October 2005, guitarist Georg Laakso was badly injured in a car accident and due to the extent of his spinal cord injuries, on 12 July 2006 issued a statement of his permanent resignation from the band on the official website; the band continued to work on their second album, titled The Varangian Way, released in early 2007. Jussi Wickström recorded all guitars on the album. Mathias Nygård revealed in the January 2007 edition of Terrorizer magazine that the touring musicians Hannes Horma, Olli Vänskä, Janne Mäkinen and Antti Laurila had been added to the band as full-time members, taking them up to an 8-piece act.
It turned out that of the two accordion players, only Mäkinen had become an official member. Laurila is no longer a touring musician for the band. On 19 February 2007, keyboardist Antti Ventola posted a message on the Turisas discussion forum announcing that he and the band had parted ways; this was confirmed by the rest of the band. Mathias Nygård performed the keyboards on The Varangian Way and Turisas are presently using backing tracks to replicate them on stage. In January 2008, accordion player Janne "Lisko" Mäkinen disappeared mysteriously in Amsterdam. For the upcoming tour dates in spring 2008 Turisas announced Netta Skog as a step-in accordionist, she had helped the band on the European tour in October–November 2007. Netta was soon after added to the band on a full-time basis. After a string of festivals in the Summer of 2008, in September the band started a long tour through the United States and Europe in support of DragonForce; this tour ended in March 2009, the band took part in a new European tour with Cradle of Filth and Moonspell, dubbed the "Filthfest Tour 2009", in April and May 2009.
The band played at Wacken Open Air in early August 2009 and played at Bloodstock Open Air in Mid August 2009. The band took time off at the end of 2009 to make a new album and planned to return as fully-fledged band no longer supporting others. In 2010 the band concentrated on finishing the recordings of the upcoming third album. Still, the band did a short tour in Asia and Australia in May 2010, including headline concerts in Sydney and Melbourne, two gigs in China, a gig in Shanghai World Expo 2010 and a gig in Japan; as of March 2010, Turisas announced. The title for the latest album, Stand Up and Fight, was revealed on 11 November 2010: the album was released through Century Media on 28 February in Europe and 8 March in North America. A new song off that album: "The March of the Varangian Guard" was performed at the band's Finnish gigs in October 2010 On 17 December 2010, the title track "Stand Up And Fight" was released as a free download on the band's website; the band took part in tours in Mexico and North America with Cradle of Filth, the other supporting bands being Nachtmystium and Daniel Lioneye beginning in January 2011 and in Europe with Die Apokalyptischen Reiter from March through April 2011.
Their England tour came with Crimfall as the supporting band, as well as other local supporting bands. 2012 saw them headline the North American "Paganfest: America Part III" tour with Alestorm and Huntress in tow. In November 2012, the band announced they had started work on their fourth album titled Turisas2013; the album was published on 21 August 2013 in Finland, 26 August in Europe, while the UK followed on 2 September and North America on 3 September. A Finnish Summer with Turisas Taiston Tie – The Battle Path Terra Tavestorum The Heart of Turisas Mathias "Warlord" Nygård – lead vocals, percussion Jussi Wickström – guitar, backing vocals, bass Olli Vänskä – violin, backing vocals Jesper Anastasiadis – bass Jaakko Jakku – drums, percussion Janne Mäkinen – accordion Antti Ventola – keyboard Georg Laakso – guitar Ari Kärkkäinen – guitar Sami Aarnio – bass guitar Tino Ahola – bass guitar Mikko Törmikoski – bass guitar Hannes "Hanu" Horma – bass guitar Netta Skog – accordion Jukka-Pekka Miettinen – bass guitar Tuomas "Tude" Lehtonen – drums, percussion Robert Engstrand – keyboard Riku Ylitalo – accordion, keyboards Wincef Boncamper – accordion Antti Laurila – accordion Antje Bosselmann-Ruickbie: Heavy Metal Meets Byzantium!
Contact Between Scandinavia and Byzantium in the Albums ‘The Varangian Way’ and ‘Stand Up and Fight’ by the Finnish Band Turisas. In: Menschen, Sprache, Dinge. Wege der Kommunikation zwischen Byzanz und dem Westen. Studien zur Ausstellung "der Westen. 1000 vergessene Jahre", ed. by Falko Daim, Christian Gastgeber, Dominik Heher, Claudia Rapp. Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident 9.2, Mainz 2018, 391-419 Official website Century Media Records Interview with Turisas at ME Metalhour Olli´s Interview – HallOfMetal Official YouTube channel
Nifelvind
Nifelvind is the fifth full-length album by the Finnish folk metal band Finntroll, released on February 17, 2010 through Century Media. This album reached the highest chart result in Finland by reaching position #8, it entered the German album charts on #31, as well as the charts in Switzerland and Austria. All lyrics are written by Katla Tracks 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 11 music by Trollhorn Tracks 3 & 8 music by Trollhorn & Tundra Tracks 9 & 10 music by Trollhorn & Routa Mathias "Vreth" Lillmåns – vocals Samuli "Skrymer" Ponsimaa – guitar Mikael "Routa" Karlbom – guitar Sami "Tundra" Uusitalo – bass Samu "Beast Dominator" Ruotsalainen – drums Henri "Trollhorn" Sorvali – keyboards Aleksi "Virta" Virta – keyboards Jan "Katla" Jämsen – lyrics "Solsagan" music video on YouTube "Under Bergets Rot" music video on YouTube
Jaktens tid
Jaktens tid is the second studio album by the Finnish folk metal band Finntroll, released on 18 September 2001 through Spinefarm Records. All lyrics are written by Katla. Tracks 2, 5 and 12 music by Somnium. Tracks 3, 6, 10 and 11 music by Trollhorn. Tracks 4 and 7 music by Somnium/Trollhorn. Track 8 music by Trollhorn/Tundra. Track 9 music traditional arr. Lundmark. Jan "Katla" Jämsen – vocals Samuli "Skrymer" Ponsimaa – rhythm guitar Teemu "Somnium" Raimoranta – lead, rhythm & acoustic guitar, choirs Samu "Beast Dominator" Ruotsalainen – drums, choirs Henri "Trollhorn" Sorvali – keyboards Sami "Tundra" Uusitalo – bass, choirsAdditional personnelJonne Järvelä – joik-singing and choirs Hanky Bannister – banjo Vicar Tapio Wilska – Latin mumblings
Myspace
Myspace is a social networking website offering an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, groups, photos and videos. Myspace was the largest social networking site in the world from 2005 to 2009, it is headquartered in California. Myspace was acquired by News Corporation in July 2005 for $580 million, in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the United States. In April 2008, Myspace was overtaken by Facebook in the number of unique worldwide visitors and was surpassed in the number of unique U. S. visitors in May 2009, though Myspace generated $800 million in revenue during the 2008 fiscal year. Since the number of Myspace users has declined in spite of several redesigns; as of January 2018, Myspace was ranked 4,153 by total Web traffic, 1,657 in the United States. Myspace had a significant influence on pop culture and music and created a computer game platform that launched the successes of Zynga and RockYou, among others. Despite an overall decline, in 2015 Myspace still had 50.6 million unique monthly visitors and had a pool of nearly 1 billion active and inactive registered users.
In June 2009, Myspace employed 1,600 employees. In June 2011, Specific Media Group and Justin Timberlake jointly purchased the company for $35 million. On February 11, 2016, it was announced that Myspace and its parent company had been purchased by Time Inc. Time Inc. was in turn purchased by the Meredith Corporation on January 31, 2018. In August 2003, several eUniverse employees with Friendster accounts saw potential in its social networking features; the group decided to mimic the more popular features of the website. Within 10 days, the first version of Myspace was ready for launch, implemented using ColdFusion. A complete infrastructure of finance, human resources, technical expertise and server capacity was available for the site; the project was overseen by Brad Greenspan, who managed Chris DeWolfe, Josh Berman, Tom Anderson, a team of programmers and resources provided by eUniverse. The first Myspace users were eUniverse employees; the company held contests to see. EUniverse used its 20 million users and e-mail subscribers to breathe life into Myspace, move it to the head of the pack of social networking websites.
A key architect was tech expert Toan Nguyen who helped stabilize the Myspace platform when Brad Greenspan asked him to join the team. Co-founder and CTO Aber Whitcomb played an integral role in software architecture, utilizing the superior development speed of ColdFusion over other dynamic database driven server-side languages of the time. Despite over ten times the number of developers, developed in JavaServer Pages, could not keep up with the speed of development of Myspace and cfm; the MySpace.com domain was owned by YourZ.com, Inc. intended until 2002 for use as an online data storage and sharing site. By late 2003, it was transitioned from a file storage service to a social networking site. A friend, who worked in the data storage business, reminded Chris DeWolfe that he had earlier bought the domain MySpace.com. DeWolfe suggested. Brad Greenspan nixed the idea, believing that keeping Myspace free was necessary to make it a successful community. Myspace gained popularity among teenagers and young adults.
In February 2005, DeWolfe held talks with Mark Zuckerberg over acquiring Facebook but DeWolfe rejected Zuckerberg's $75 million offer. Some employees of Myspace, including DeWolfe and Berman, were able to purchase equity in the property before MySpace and its parent company eUniverse was bought. In July 2005, in one of the company's first major Internet purchases, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation purchased Myspace for US$580 million. News Corporation had beat out Viacom by offering a higher price for the website, the purchase was seen as a good investment at the time. Of the $580 million purchase price $327 million has been attributed to the value of Myspace according to the financial adviser fairness opinion. Within a year, Myspace had tripled in value from its purchase price. News Corporation saw the purchase as a way to capitalize on Internet advertising and drive traffic to other News Corporation properties. After losing the bidding war for Myspace, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone stunned the entertainment industry in September 2006 when he fired Tom Freston from the position of CEO. Redstone believed that the failure to acquire MySpace contributed to the 20% drop in Viacom's stock price in 2006 up to the date of Freston's ouster.
Freston's successor as CEO, Philippe Dauman, was quoted as saying "never let another competitor beat us to the trophy". Redstone told interviewer Charlie Rose that losing MySpace had been "humiliating", adding, "MySpace was sitting there for the taking for $500 million" In January 2006, Fox announced plans to launch a UK version of Myspace in a bid to "tap into the UK music scene", which they did, they launched similar versions in other countries. The 100 millionth account was created on August 2006, in the Netherlands. On November 1, 2007, Myspace and Bebo joined the Google-led OpenSocial alliance, which included Friendster, Hi5, LinkedIn, Plaxo and Six Apart. OpenSocial was to promote a common set of standards for software developers to write programs for social networks. Facebook remained independent. Google had been unsuccessful in build
Black metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, a shrieking vocal style distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, raw recording, unconventional song structures, an emphasis on atmosphere. Artists appear in corpse paint and adopt pseudonyms. During the 1980s, several thrash metal and death metal bands formed a prototype for black metal; this so-called first wave included bands such as Venom, Mercyful Fate and Celtic Frost. A second wave arose in the early 1990s, spearheaded by Norwegian bands such as Mayhem, Burzum, Emperor and Gorgoroth; the early Norwegian black metal scene developed the style of their forebears into a distinct genre. Norwegian-inspired black metal scenes emerged throughout Europe and North America, although some other scenes developed their own styles independently; some prominent Swedish bands spawned during this second wave, such as Marduk and Dark Funeral. A synonym for "Satanic metal", black metal has sparked controversy, due to the actions and ideologies associated with the genre.
Many artists express extreme anti-Christian and misanthropic views, advocating various forms of Satanism or ethnic paganism. In the 1990s, members of the scene were responsible for a spate of church murders. There is a small neo-Nazi movement within black metal, although it has been shunned by many prominent artists. Black metal strives to remain underground, inaccessible to the mainstream and those who are not committed. Although contemporary black metal refers to the Norwegian style with shrieking vocals and raw production, the term has been applied to bands with differing sounds. Norwegian-inspired black metal guitarists favor high-pitched or trebly guitar tones and heavy distortion; the guitar is played with fast, un-muted tremolo picking. Guitarists use dissonance—along with specific scales and chord progressions—to create a sense of dread; the tritone, or flat-fifth, is used. Guitar solos and low guitar tunings are rare in black metal; the bass guitar is used to play stand-alone melodies. It is not uncommon for the bass to be muted against the guitar, or for it to homophonically follow the low-pitched riffs of the guitar.
While electronic keyboards were "not heard in type of music", Dimmu Borgir say they started using keyboards "in the background" and started using them as a "proper instrument" for creating "atmosphere". Some newer black metal bands began raising their production quality and introducing additional instruments such as synthesizers and orchestras; the drumming is fast and relies on double-bass and blast beats to maintain tempos that can sometimes approach 300 beats per minute. These fast tempos require great skill and physical stamina, typified by black metal drummers Frost and Hellhammer. Still, authenticity is still prioritized over technique. "This professionalism has to go," insists well-respected drummer and metal historian Fenriz of Darkthrone. "I want to de-learn playing drums, I want to play primitive and simple, I don't want to play like a drum solo all the time and make these complicated riffs". Black metal songs stray from conventional song structure and lack clear verse-chorus sections.
Instead, many black metal songs contain repetitive instrumental sections. The Greek style—established by Rotting Christ and Varathron—has more traditional heavy metal and death metal traits than Norwegian black metal. Traditional black metal bands tend to favor raspy, high-pitched vocals which include techniques such as shrieking and snarling, a vocal style influenced by Quorthon of Bathory. Death growls, common in the death metal genre, are sometimes used, but less than the characteristic black metal shriek. Black metal lyrics attack Christianity and the other institutional religions using apocalyptic language. Satanic lyrics are common, many see them as essential to black metal. For Satanist black metal artists, "Black metal songs are meant to be like Calvinist sermons. Misanthropy, global catastrophe, death and rebirth are common themes. Another topic found in black metal lyrics is that of the wild and extreme aspects and phenomena of the natural world the wilderness, mountains, winter and blizzards.
Black metal has a fascination with the distant past. Many bands write about the mythology and folklore of their homelands and promote a revival of pre-Christian, pagan traditions. A significant number of bands write lyrics only in their native language and a few have lyrics in archaic languages; some doom metal-influenced artists' lyrics focus on depression, introspection, self-harm and suicide. Many bands choose not to play live. Many of those who do play live maintain that their performances "are not for entertainment or spectacle. Sincerity and extremity are valued above all else"; some bands consider their concerts to be rituals and make use of stage props and theatrics. Bands such as Mayhem and Gorgoroth are noted for their controversial shows, which have featured impaled animal heads, mock crucifixions, medieval weaponry and band members doused in animal blood. A few vocalists, such as Dead and Kvarforth, are known for cutting themselves while singing onstage. Black metal artists appear dressed in black with combat boots, bullet belts, spiked wristbands and inverted crosses and inverted pentagrams to reinforce their anti-Christian or anti-religious stance.
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Europe
Europe is a continent located in the Northern Hemisphere and in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, it comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Since around 1850, Europe is most considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. Although the term "continent" implies physical geography, the land border is somewhat arbitrary and has been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity; the division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East-West cultural and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border does not follow political boundaries, with Turkey and Kazakhstan being transcontinental countries. A strict application of the Caucasus Mountains boundary places two comparatively small countries and Georgia, in both continents.
Europe covers 2 % of the Earth's surface. Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 741 million as of 2016; the European climate is affected by warm Atlantic currents that temper winters and summers on much of the continent at latitudes along which the climate in Asia and North America is severe. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast. Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization; the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and the subsequent Migration Period marked the end of ancient history and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Renaissance humanism, exploration and science led to the modern era. Since the Age of Discovery started by Portugal and Spain, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at various times the Americas all of Africa and Oceania and the majority of Asia.
The Age of Enlightenment, the subsequent French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic and social change in Western Europe and the wider world. Both world wars took place for the most part in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded, following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill, with the idea of unifying Europe to achieve common goals, it includes all European states except for Belarus and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, a separate political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation.
The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The currency of most countries of the European Union, the euro, is the most used among Europeans. In classical Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess; the word Europe is derived from her name. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, "wide, broad" and ὤψ "eye, countenance", hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean "wide-gazing" or "broad of aspect". Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to a Semitic term for "west", this being either Akkadian erebu meaning "to go down, set" or Phoenician'ereb "evening, west", at the origin of Arabic Maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav. Michael A. Barry, professor in Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies Department, finds the mention of the word Ereb on an Assyrian stele with the meaning of "night, sunset", in opposition to Asu " sunrise", i.e. Asia.
The same naming motive according to "cartographic convention" appears in Greek Ἀνατολή. Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is poor." Next to these hypotheses there is a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning "darkness", which produced Greek Erebus. Most major world languages use words derived from Europa to refer to the continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu. In some Turkic languages the Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa; the prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water
Sami Uusitalo
Sami "Tundra" Uusitalo is a bass guitarist best known from the folk metal band Finntroll and the funeral doom band Shape of Despair. He plays in the folk/doom metal group The Mist and the Morning Dew. Despite sharing the same name with a member of Funebre, he is not the same person
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Media related to Finntroll at Wikimedia Commons
