Biography
.. Jarkko Ahola, Arto Järvinen, and Viljo Rantanen met each other in 2002 and decided to form a band. Jari Kuokkanen joined in as a part time drummer, and later became an official member. Rantanen was the one to come up with the name Teräsbetoni. Teräsbetoni made its first songs in 2003. They were published on the band's homepage in the summer of 2003 and were called "Teräsbetoni", "Teräksen varjo" (trans. The Shadow of Steel), and "Maljanne nostakaa" (trans. Raise Your Toast).
The band started to get popular in underground circles and soon the knowledge of the band's existence spread wider. Excited fans collected a card of condolence, demanding a recording contract for Teräsbetoni, and sent it to several record companies. In 2003, Teräsbetoni performed their first concert and a live version of "Taivas lyö tulta" was added to the band's homepage. In their first concerts they use to play a cover versions of Ronnie James Dio's "Rainbow In The Dark" and Manowar's "Metal Warriors". In the late 2004 the band signed a recording contract with Warner Music Finland and the recording for "Taivas lyö tulta" single started in December 2004. The single was published February 2nd, 2005, and during its first week on the Finnish single list it rose to the top of the list, followed by plentiful radio time and the band becoming more widely known.
The recordings for the "Metallitotuus" album started in January 2005 was published April 6th, 2005. During its first week on the Finnish list, it placed 2nd and stood on the list for 29 weeks. Another single from the album was "Orjatar" (trans. Slavewoman). A music video was also made of this song, and it was shown first time in the TOP40 show April 16th, 2005. Taivas lyö tulta was later chosen to be the goal song for the Finnish icehockey national team A in the Karelian tournament.
"Metallitotuus" went platinum (in Finland, that means over 30,000 copies have been sold) in the year it was published, with almost 33,000 copies sold, being the third most popular heavy rock album in Finland that year. In June 2006, the second album of the band, "Vaadimme metallia" (trans. We Demand Metal), was published. During the day of its publishing, it nearly broke the gold album line (which in Finland is 15,000 sold albums).
There has been a lot of interest of Teräsbetoni in countries outside Finland and the band is also very interested of playing outside Finland; so far they have done only one concert outside Finland, this happened in Wacken Open Air 2005. The question about using the finnish language in the vocals is right now in the concencration of the band. Jarkko Ahola has stated that Teräsbetoni will not hit anywhere but Finland in the year 2006 but in the year 2007 it might be possible.
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