Biography
The beast of Wrathage was founded in 1997 by the Juntunen Twins Scythe and D.V Grim. The goal back then was to create black metal that would please themselves.
Amongst the Twins the founding members were close friends:
D.V Grim - Guitar
Scythe - Guitar
Jani Hurme - Bass
Olli-Jukka Mustonen (Catamenia, Dorotha) - Vocals
Tero Nevala (National Napalm Syndicate, Dorotha, Catamenia) - Keyboards
Mika Pakonen - Drums
The first couple of years the band was mostly learning to play and take some corpse paint "band" pictures and drinking the shit out of themselves and due to lack of interest from the original line-up a search for a proper one started. During 1999 D.V Grim embarked on another venture as a vocalist for Thrash act The Unblessed where he met a former Thyrane guitarist Joni Kylätie (Hornanvasara) and persuaded him to join Wrathage as a drummer and without hesitation he accepted (and away they sailed...)
During that time D.V Grim also met Jukka “E agonos / Koba” Ylisuvanto through school and found out he was interested in joining Wrathage as a Vocalist. Not long from that Koba found himself more interested in playing drums and moved to Northern Finland so a new vocalist was needed. Up to today Koba is still writing lyrics to Wrathage and luckily so his ingenious texts definitely add a notch or two to the bands material. During the early years as the live line-up was not going strong D.V Grim and Scythe experimented with some more atmospheric and darker black metal, influenced strongly by bands such as Ved buens ende or Burzum’s Filosofem and from that a trilogy called “As night falls” was started.
The material was almost finished during that time but only almost. Two songs from that experiment (Black Movement Conspiracy and As Night Falls) were later almost completely re-done into proper Wrathage material and released with their third Promo Crawlspace Antipathy (2007). Hornanvasara used to play guitar in a trash band Soulhammer (Formerly known as Downfall) where Janne "fast as hell" Kusmin was playing drums and after Kusmin moved to Oulu, Kylätie introduced him to rest of the band and not long from that he was the new Wrathage drummer as Kylätie concentrated on his own material and band. Finally the actual training got all started up with a motivated and most skillfull drummer coming to the beginning of a new millenium. Marko “Chaos” Heikkinen followed soon after Kusmin through another D.V Grim band venture and finally a proper line-up was gathered.
The coming of a new age (2000-2005)
Although the early days were short in playing live and Kusmin also joined other bands with more activities (Kalmah, Catamenia) there were a lot of material and killer riffs composed by the Juntunen Twins. The first ever song recorded at the HmH homestudio was a song called Inner Night and is nowadays only held in the archives of the members (except for a lucky few). Wrathage songs were first made available with machine drums through the now deceased mp3.com. The first ever uploaded Wrathage song was "Before The Monumental Beast" which can also be heard on the first Wrathage promo "anNihil[N]ation" (2004).
A little name was spread through the internet but nothing drastic happened. A couple of years the band practiced and made songs and finally during 2004 the band decided to record a 4 song promo with real drums to get the things properly started in the metal world. The sessions were spread throughout the spring of 2004 and finally after fooling around with the CD covers and mixing anNihil[N]ation was released 22.10.2004.
The promo received good feedback from the media especially in Finland and with good solid promo a live gig comes possible. A couple of months after the release of "anNihil[N]ation" Kusmin got in touch with Hevimesta, Oulu personnel and convinced them that Wrathage would be a great opening act for any band that would play there and so it became that the first ever Wrathage gig would support no other than the Swedish Death metal monster Dismember together with Deathbound at the start of 2005.
The gig was success and this was also noted with the audience and some media. Wrathage played material from the first and under work second promo bur also a cover from the magnificent Dodheimsgard's - Ion Storm. The gig was recorded with two Mini-DV cameras later to be released as a live-DVD Annihilating (2005). After a solid response from the media and a succesfull first live appearance at the start of 2005, Wrathage decided to enter the studio again in spring 2005 for the recordings of their second official promo Black light zodiac (2005) and a cover song of Immortal's "Through the halls of eternity" from the legendary album Battles in the north this time with A.Lindholm (Lambs, The Duskfall) engineering the sounds.
The recordings eventually took about 5 months to complete but it made just in time to be released at the Jalometalli 2005 Metal Festival where Wrathage opened up the festival with a killer show. After it's release Black Light Zodiac was conquering the media regardless of it's nationality and the band was hoping it would finally get some labels interested but nothing concrete progressed. Black light zodiac introduced more death metal elements in Wrathage production although they've never limited their material in any specific category.
The Immortal Cover was planned for an Immortal Tribute release through the Greek label Townsend Avalanche Music - Athens but nothing seemed to happen on that end. As mentioned before in August 2005 Wrathage continued their devastating live shows in Jalometalli 2005 Metal Festival, with headliners such as Exmortem, Dissection and Entombed. The gig was once again shot on video and later released as a live-DVD titled Black Fucking Zodiac in early 2006. The previous DVD was quickly sold out so the material from that DVD was also included in this release. After a great many cancelled trainings Chaos left the band in November 2005 due to lack of time and interest and Wrathage began to look for a new guitarist. The first proper line-up was no more.
Beast rises (2006 and onwards)
Chaos left a void in Wrathage making it impossible to continue playing live for the time being. After a thorough search Scythe contacted H.Beast through an add at the finnish Musician netsite muusikoiden.net. It turned out that he was actually a friend of Kusmin and yes he was interested in joining Wrathage. Brief session was held with Beast and regardless of the short appearance - hell that guy could play and he was in the band. Training Beast took it's time. D.V Grim was now living some distance in the north and Kusmin and Scythe had their day jobs so nothing special happened for a while and 2006 was a quiet one for Wrathage. Then after one and a half years of silence Wrathage was contacted by Jalometalli crew to play at the Jalometalli Winterfest 2007 Metal Festival at the biggest Finnish Rock Club, Club Teatria, Oulu.
Again without hesitation the band accepted and delivered one hell of a feast for the audience. Aggressive Headbanding together with the best so far mixing delivered Wrathage to the people like never before. Live video was captured that night and spread through the internet (www.youtube.com/wrathage). The quiet times made it possible for the band to compose new material and they planned for a 2007 release of their debut full lenght. The busy schedules, ambitious plans and harsh self-criticism delayed the plans so much that they decided to record yet another promo because too long had passed since Black Light Zodiac and the world deserved more Wrathage. Kusmin recorded the drums for Crawlspace Antipathy during March 2007 and the recordings are currently proceeding as planned.
The History? what the Hell! They're making it, so look forward for updates!
Through the golden nothing and rooms thick of mercury fury” (Koba – The mercury insolence - 2006)
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