Entwine

ENTWINE:BITTERSWEET
Finland’s ENTWINE have travelled a long way from their Death Metal-ish first demo tapes to the catchy Gothic tunes of their latest albums. Founded by Aksu Hanttu (drums), Tom Mikkola (guitar, also vocals at the time) and T.Taipale (bass) in 1995, Entwine only managed to receive proper attention from the media and record labels when their music was turning more Gothic-Metal orientated in 1997, a change that required not only a new vocalist, but also some keyboards and a second guitar. For vocals, founding members found P. Willman, whose talents were immediately put to a test on ENTWINE’s first “softer” demo, ”Divine Infinity”. Encouraged by the tape’s success, the band also asked for keyboard player Riitta Heikkonen to join ENTWINE’s ranks, and the band could finally start playing live shows. The band’s underground success did not go unnoticed for long. In 1999 Spikefarm Records offered ENTWINE a recording deal, and in September the same year ENTWINE’s debut album "The Treasures Within Hearts" was released. Although the debut album gained good reviews and the band grew more and more successful with each gig they played, all was not working within the group. Soon after the release of “Treasures…”, singer Willman and bass player Taipale left the band. Luckily for ENTWINE, it did not take long for replacements to be found: Singer Mika Tauriainen and bass-player Joni Miettinen joined the band in May 2000, enabling the recordings of their second album, “Gone” (which was also the first album to be licensed by Century Media Records for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, BeNeLux and North America), to start. The first single release from “Gone”, entitled "New Dawn", proved the band’s potential to every Goth-LIstener on this planet and paved the way for the huge success of “Gone”. Needing a second guitarist, Jaani Kähkönen was added to ENTWINE’s line-up in 2001, just in time to start the recordings of their third album “Time Of Despair”, which was released in the Spring of 2002 and then followed by a European tour with Theatre of Tragedy and Ram-Zet. Both the album and the tour were milestones on ENTWINE’s career, establishing their place in the Gothic Metal hall of fame and the band additionally also performed extremely successful shows at festivals like NummiRock in Finland and Summer Breeze in Germany. Now after over a year of silence, ENTWINE finally returns with a new album, this time entitled “DiEversity”, once again packaged in artwork courtesy of leading designer Travis Smith, who had already delivered the cover for “Time Of Despair”. The album was recorded at the famed Finnish Astia-Studios, the birthplace of such albums as Children of Bodom’s “Hate Crew Deathroll” and To/Die/For’s “Jaded”. Finishing touches for “DiEversity” were added at Finnvox studios by mixer Mikko Karmila (who has previously worked with Nightwish, Lullacry and Charon to name a few) and by mastering engineer Mika Jussila (famous for his golden touch on all albums of Nightwish and Children of Bodom). “DiEversity” is captivating in its beauty, movingly emotional and most importantly, heavy. New influences have been added to the sound of this young and aspiring band, pushing “DiEversity” far above the mean. Besides well-tried ingredients of the Gothic-Metal style, ENTWINE bypass the archetypal whiny parts of which the genre is infamous for and upgrade their sound with rocking guitars, vocals that are more rooted in new US Rock than in the typical Finnish Goth scene (check out “Still Remains” and you’ll understand) and an over-all songwriting improvement, delivering the finest tunes ENTWINE have written so far. Obviously the album title “DiEversity” explains ENTWINE’s new direction best: Modern Rock with a good approach of Gothic Metal simply can not get any better than this!
***NOTE: THIS WHOLE BIO WAS TAKEN FROM centurymedia.net. The exact page is http://www.centurymedia.net/bands/entwine.htm***
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