Biography
Monsteriser is a debutant band from Finland. Even though the band is a newcomer, the members are not. They’re in their thirties, and they come from Imatra, a small town in South Karelia in eastern Finland.They have been playing various types of heavy rock for a couple of decades, since their teen-age turmoil. Now they have kids, some kind of real jobs, and yet they’re still playing heavy rock like there’s no tomorrow. Is that something that grown-up men should be doing? Absolutely yes.
Monsteriser’s front-man Miitri Aaltonen has become a top class producer in Finland, mostly due to the great success of two chart-topping metal bands, Mokoma and Stam1na. Many Finnish music lovers recognize Miitri’s production credits, and with Monsteriser he’s made even a bigger impression by presenting himself as a striking singer and talented songwriter.
Drummer Janne Hynynen is Miitri’s childhood friend, and together they started their first band before they had pubic hair. During the last couple of decades they’ve been playing in various bands together and apart, but none of the projects got anywhere. Well, some bands actually did, but these guys weren’t in the bands when they got successful.
At this point and age most people bury their bands, get hair cuts and real jobs, but these two guys wanted to go for one more round.
Current line-up was established in the beginning of 2005, when Antti Toiviainen took the guitar player’s position and things started to shape up. Bass player Tommi Suonpää finalized the line-up.
By the end of year they had a number of new songs and a new demo recorded. The demo left no doubts about Monsteriser’s potential. Soon Monsteriser had a deal with Playground, and in January 2006 the band was in studio recording their debut album. As a prominent production wizard Miitri squeezed Monsteriser’s session into his tight schedule, and recorded, produced and mixed the album in a month. Miitri’s no-gimmicks production approach is evident on the album, and the in-your-face sound has been described to be “so dry it’s down right flammable”.
Black Sabbath, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains are the most obvious influences, so what could be a better description to their sound than Heavy Grunge. And since they are country boys from South Karelia, Monsteriser’s music has been dubbed as South Karelia Heavy Grunge.
On “The Long Snap To Zero” Monsteriser doesn’t even try to hide the source of inspiration. Instead they openly pay homage to their heroes from Seattle and the forefathers of modern metal.
Heavy Grunge, as defined by Monsteriser, is heavy, rough edged, groovy, straight forward, melodic and sinisterly harmonic. As said before, production is stripped down and the music relies on the riffs, strong melodies, and the fact that the band simply kicks ass. As one Finnish rock magazine said in its review, “Monsteriser sounds like Alice In Chains with Dimebag Darrell on guitar”.
The name of the album comes from recording software that Miitri favours, where a function under the same name resets an edited part into point zero. “It’s a perfect metaphor for our history. We’ve been making music for more or less twenty years, with basically nothing to show for it, but again we start from square one, even though we are all grown-up men, and we should be wise enough to call it a day.” says Miitri.
Well Miitri, it’s good you didn’t. Now is your time.
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