BAND HISTORY
ALTARIA's story
began in the beginning of year 2000 when Marko Pukkila and
Tony Smedjebacka decided to form a new outfit. Both musicians
have participated in the band called Blindside in the
past. Blindside wasn't active enough, so with the arsenal
of few songs and many aspirations, the duo decided to form
the new band. At the same time, the search for other members
has begun.
The first addition
was Johan Mattjus, an old auqintance of Marko, whom Pukkila
accidently met on a train. Johan's singing talents were not
being used in any band at the time, so ALTARIA was lucky to
obtain a great vocalist.
Next member
to join ALTARIA was a monster guitar player Jani Liimatainen,
of Sonata Arctica fame. Jani was excited about joining
ALTARIA, which at the time was shaping up as a project. But,
what started as fun, quickly turned into a real band, as great
songs began to form and live performances were very well received.
After the first studio session
was behind, a 3-track demo/promo cd called "Sleeping Visions"
was distributed to medias and record companies. The response
was quite good and it made the band to proceed further.
In the beginning of 2002
there were some scheduling problems with Mattjus, so Jouni
Nikula was called to help the band during their 2 live shows.
Because the gigs went extremly well and both the audience
and the band really liked what they heard, ALTARIA voted for
getting Jouni as a permanent member of the band. So, there
it was - the first line-up change in ALTARIA's history.
During the spring 2002
ALTARIA went again to the studio, recording eight kickass
songs. Four of them was released under the name "Feed The
Fire", and the whole demo was once again put freely downloadble
on the Internet. Since releasing the new demo, all ALTARIA's
songs leaped on top 50 at MP3.com's charts at the same time!
The heavy metal audience can't be wrong - there's truly some
magic on ALTARIA's songs. In four weeks people downloaded
over 1700 MP3 songs of ALTARIA.
In June 2002
ALTARIA signed a promotion & show booking contract with
GerMusica. This, with extremly well received new demo, opened
some more passages towards getting a record deal. In August,
2002, ALTARIA signed a contract with AOR Heaven and the debute
album called "Invitation" were scheduled to be released in
spring 2003.
The Autumn 2002
was busy time for ALTARIA. The recording sessions of Invitation
took their time and the band also made several kick-ass live
shows during October and November. The live shows also featured
second guitarist, Emppu, and because of the great chemistry
between him and the rest of the band, Emppu became soon a
permanent member of ALTARIA.
The recordings of the debute album
were completed in January 2003 and it was mixed after that.
Both were completed at Sonic Pump Studios by Nino Laurenne
(Thunderstone, ex-Antidote). The final touch of the album
was the mastering at Finnvox Studios by Mika Jussila. The
release date of Invitation was set for April 28th, 2003.
Line-up changes
were made after releasing the debute album Invitation.
Before the tour to support Invitation vocalist Jouni Nikula
decided to leave the band. ALTARIA contacted Taage of Kilpi
fame and asked him to join the band, so the gap was filled
instantly after Jouni's departure. With Taage on vocals
ALTARIA did three well-received live shows on September,
2003. When the Invitation tour continued on January 2004,
Emppu discussed with the band and they both agreed it's
better him to leave the band. Emppu had to cancel the previous
live shows because of Nightwish activities. The recordings
of the fifth Nightwish album seemed to continue a bit too
far regarding to the ALTARIA tour so Emppu found two weeks
before the first show that he couldn't participate to the
tour in any matter. So, the band and Emppu decided that
Emppu can leave the band because of Nightwish having too
much things going on.
Since January 2004 ALTARIA has performed
as four-piece band. Petri Aho, a guitarist known of playing
with Marko and Tony in the past with Blindside, was called
quickly to help the band with the forthcoming Finnish tour
since the band wanted to have two guitarists for the live shows,
though there was only one guitar player on the band. ALTARIA
decided to record the follow-up for the highly successful
debute album and continue as a four-piece band.
After the Finnish tour in January 2004
ALTARIA hit the studio to record Divinity. This time Marko's and
Tony's songwriting was accompanied with two kick-ass songs written by Jani and several
others the trio co-wrote. Because of the line-up changes the follow-up album for
Invitation was doubted to be as huge killer as the debute was, but
after it's release in May 2004 the band, the media and the loyal listeners
found out that Divinity definately included some of the strongest
ALTARIA songs ever made. The press loved it, the fans loved it, the
band loved it, the label loved it - and the recording contract was directly
extended without even waiting for the new material to form.
ALTARIA started to preproduce material
for the forthcoming
third album during the winter and spring 2005. Eventually it became clear for all
that Jani couldn't find enough time to Altaria, and thus he had to leave. His main band
Sonata Arctica took so much time and efford that Altaria felt they were left
in the shade. This affected especially the live gigs which had to be organized
by looking at the Sonata Arctica schedules and filling the empty dates which were
getting more and more rare.
Jani Liimatainen and ALTARIA parted ways
mutually in June 2005, and in July ALTARIA was happy to inform they've found the
best possible replacement - J-P Alanen of Celesty fame. J-P was not only a long-time friend
of the band, but also been jamming and writing songs with ALTARIA for some
time already. He was also playing with very similar style Jani plays, and he naturally
was one of the most skillfulled young guitarists found in Finland today. After J-P
joining the band and bringing some fresh attitude, ALTARIA is again ready
to enter the studio to create another kick-ass record and hit the road creating
even more massive live shows than ever before!
...to be continued! The story doesn't end here - it has just
begun!
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