“Thrash Metal Knows No Boundaries...”
The Finnish Speed / Thrash Metal special
(Pt 2.)

Featuring interviews with Bloodride, Burning Empire, HateFrame, Murdread, Nailgunner, Pyöveli, Sightless, Solitaire, The Scourger and Witheria

All interviews by Luxi Lahtinen

Bloodride live pictures by Luxi Lahtinen
The Scourger live pictures by Toni Salminen
 

Last year, in January 2004 to be exact, I got an idea to introduce a bunch of up´n´coming Finnish Speed - and Thrash Metal bands to a wider audience via Metal-Rules.com (view that feature here) simply because to me it seemed many of these new - yet even quite damn talented I must say, Speed´n´Thrash Metal bands deserved more attention that they have managed to receive for themselves at that time.

A year later, having been following what´s been going on in the Finnish underground Metal scene for many years already - sometimes more actively, sometimes a bit less actively - I thought I would be the right enough time again to bring 10 new Finnish Speed – and Thrash Metal bands to attention that had made a positive impact on me one way or the other during these last 12-14 months or so. Almost every band of the 10 interviewed bands in this 2nd part of “The Finnish Speed – and Thrash Metal Special” is still unsigned (with the exceptions of both HateFrame and Solitaire) and is looking for a suitable label to sign with, so if you happen to own a record label and your main interest has been focused around this particular genre mostly, then don´t hesitate to check out the bands for this special feature.

Without prolonging your burning curiosity about the featured bands any longer, now let´s get started with the 2nd invasion of Finnish speed merchants & thrash bangers… read on! 

Heavy Metal has always been very popular in Russia so it isn't any surprise that several big bands and names are willing and eager to tour the country. However, Russian bands have remained more on the underground level internationally even though they enjoy tremendous success at home. The Russian metal lanscape is definitely huge, vital and has plenty of new and excellent bands ready to conquer the scene. ANJ is one of the new rising metal names from Russia and was chosen for a crossfire of questions from Metal-Rules.Com. The band’s leader and vocalist Anatoly Zhuravlev shed some light on ANJ.

Interview by Arto Lehtinen

Here is an interview that I’ve done with Marios from the band Nightrage. Nightrage have recently released their second album on Century Media and I asked him, of course, about the new album, about the member changes, about tour plans and what’s going to happen to Nightrage in the future.   

Interviewed by Anders Sandvall

Thanks to Jenny Walroth at Century Media Sweden for help with the interview
 
Thanks to Century Media for Promo pictures of the band