Taiga

We play heavy metal inspired mainly by nordic folkmusic. The themes of the lyrics are dealing with supernatural beings such as Trolls and pixies but also the nature of our homeland.

We have a female vocalist that sings quite nice!

The band was founded in 1998 as a band (like so many other bands) consisting of young musicians

with strong passion for the heavy music of the 80:s. To begin with, it was not much to talk about

musically. Members joined and left, leaving the three founders Jonas Lagander (guitar), Per-Henrik

Lundberg (guitar) and Erik Wibrant (bass) in a quite lonly and desperate state. It was'nt until drummer Hampus Landin and singer Mattias Wetterhall joined that things started to

work out for Taiga. Both of them are/were very skillfull musicians. The "new" band's first

demo release "A Thrill For A Kill" saw light of day with a little help from Jocke Göthberg (Marduk,

Dimension Zero) who took care of the recording. The response from those, very few, who heard it was

very positive. But soon after the release Mattias left the band and ones again Taiga stood without a

complete lineup.

Two demos followed within the timeelapse of two years. On the first one a friend of Hampus sang but she

was'nt into the music at all. She was just into Hampus. Anyway the songs on that demo was called "The beauty wich nature did provide" and "No Angel's Crying". The last "pre-period demo" - containing the songs "Where the partridge live" and "Under the yoke of a veil" - was sung by Hampus and Jonas. They growled and strangeled a couple of cute innocent kitties in front of the mic and it sounded all awful. Now they have both taken singing lessons to prevent such horrifing creations in the future.

The music of those two just previous mentioned demos was'nt that good really. The band did'nt know how it wanted to sound like. The capability was there but it was just a time of confusion and uncertainty. On the summer of 2000, Jonas injuried his left arm and was'nt able to play guitar for months. When he started to heal up he had to play very careful, not to hurt himself again. And then he came up with some very simpel riffs that sounded like nothing the band had played before. Very inspired by various folkmusic acts that

Jonas had been into for, by then, quite a long time. The other members liked it and a new path was entered by the band.

On spring 2001 a demo consisting of the songs "Brocken's Peak" and "Twittering Hybris" was recorded. The singing was taken care of by Jonas five years younger sister Sigrid who agreed to help out. It was a tremendous success! Not that it brought the band a recordeal or something like that, but it became a model. A recorded pattern for Taigas new genuine sound. Musicallyno more obstacles lay ahead. Taiga was free to explore what few had seen before. After a couple of gigs with singer Hanna, a great singer and a great person who, sadly enough, had to be fired due to her voice which did'nt fit the bands vision (she sounded all to much "MTV) Sigrid was taken in as permanent member and a demo consisting of the songs "Mist" and "The Hovel's Song" was recorded in autumn same year. After that, people started to take notice about the band. Taiga was'nt just one of all the other "hobby metalbands" anymore. It was a band with clear potential. Unfortunally bassist Erik Wibrant was not sufficently skillfull enough to cope with the other members technical playing any more. It was a sad chapter in the history of Taiga when he got fired. The bass was picked up by P-H instead who had played bass for years in other constellations and sideprojekts. Taiga had now only one guitarist but the members decided to keep it that way in order to prevent problems with new members. Perhaps it will change in the future and a new guitarist will be taken in...perhaps it will not.

Strangely enough 2002 went by without much happening at all. A totally worthless year for the band. But in 2003 Taiga got in touch with some people who wanted to make a music video. The song chosen for it was Brocken's Peak. It was recorded in the forest outside Norrköping (where the band live) and on "kulturkammaren" where the band did some nice imitations of trolls on stage by just being themselves. The result was...not very good. But it was fun doing it!

In fall same year a new demo was finally released. It consisted of the songs "Mylingen", "A halo of dandelions", "The yoke of a veil" (re-recording but this time with good vocals and better production), "Born Stubborn" and "The werewolf's Night (took my life)". Unfortunally the studio computer messed up the drums so the demo was quite useless. It was not worth sending around to labels even thou the songs were good. Instead, the band started to focus on playing live. A couple of gigs were done and the band had tremendous fun on each one of them. They decided that it was now time to come out of the rehersal room and show the world how trolls kick arse!

Heavy metal, Nordic Folkmusic, nordic classical musik, deathmetal, blackmetal, swing, jazz etc.