Susperia was started by Tjodalv ( Dimmu Borgir, Old Mans Child ), who everybody should be familiar with by now, and Cyrus (Session: Satyricon, Old Mans Child ) in October 1998.
After Tjodalv left Dimmu Borgir in the middle of march 1999 he started to concentrate fully on Susperia together with Cyrus, which are old time friends. But before that, sometime in 1998 Tjodalv and Cyrus started to write and work on the music that we know today. This was the start on the band we today know as Susperia.
It all started to happen at the Wacken Open Air Festival in august 1999 when Athera meet Tjodalv when they where both traveling with Mayhem to help them out with their show. Tjodalv had brought with him some pre-production stuff of some music, and he told Athera he was looking for some musicians to get this band up and running. Athera had a band on a nonprofessional basis and he told Tjodalv that he was interested in listening to his stuff, so he borrowed the CD when he got home to Norway.
The music immediately caught Athera's attention as it was totally free of synthesizer's and was almost like pure extreme metal to the bone, and there was a special originality to it that made him listen to the CD`s 7 songs over and over again. Finally he called Tjodalv and told him he liked the music very much and was interested in trying something out. Tjodalv and Cyrus in addition to Athera as a vocalist, they also needed a bass player and a second guitar player, so Athera brought with him his long time bass playing friend (Memnock), and another friend to play the guitar (Elvorn), both of them was at that time playing in Atheras band.
Susperia met up for a rehearsal in September 99 and after the session they agreed that this could work out great! And they decided to aim for a demo within the end of the year, the demo was recorded in December 99 at Pitfire Studio outside Oslo, the demo was mixed and mastered by L.Argedick. Synth and piano on this recording was done by Mustis (Dimmu Borgir). The demo which contains 5 songs is called "Illusions of evil".
The demo was sent out to different record companies and the response was fucking enormous! Susperia received about 10 solid offers from mainly major companies and after reviewing it all, they decided to start working on the deal with Nuclear Blast. In early 2000 Susperia signed a 4 record deal with Nuclear Blast. Their debut and yet untitled 10 song album (1 bonus for the jap version) will be recorded in October 2000 and preliminary release date is set to March 2001.
Susperia was first named Seven Sins, and the inspiration to that name came from the original seven death sins, greed, lust and so on. But due to copyright reasons they changed the band name to Susperia.
The music style of susperia is highly original and can be described as brutal metal together with some melodic twists, Susperia feel that originality is the essence of surviving the music industry today. So they have united elements from what they feel is essential music.
On the "Illusions of evil"demo they where using synt and piano wich is common in this style of music (BM) but on their debut album there will be no synt or piano, this to give a more aggressive sound and to differ from other bands in the same category.
Susperia played their first live gig at John Dee in Oslo, They headlined after their country men in RAGNAROK and ALSVARTR had heated the crowd up. And just a few months later they again entered the stage at the Scream 10 year party and did a energic concert that showed the people there that Susperia have a big future in front of them.
Susperia is put together of 5 different personalities and highly skilled individual musicians, that have a strong foundation in the Norwegian Black Metal scene. The guys in the band are true best friends, and they have a great time together and they spend most of their time together both in music and in private.
Susperia are not a Satanic band but through their lyrics they tend to criticize and question the views and moral of Christianity. They do not believe in God, but they don`t believe in Satan either. They highly believe in their music and in their individual selves.
All the guys in Susperia are very serious about their commitment in the band and it would not be any major understatement in saying that Susperia is a project, their commitment and goals for the future makes them nothing but a genuine band!
The debut album, Predominance, was recorded in Abyss Studios in October 2000 and supervised by Peter Tägtgren. Upon its release March 26th, 2001, Susperia was invited to support Dimmu Borgir on the entire European part of their world tour. Susperia toured Western Europe with Dimmu Borgir, In Flames, Nevermore and Lacuna Coil in April, and Eastern and Southern Europe with Dimmu Borgir and Destruction in May. They were also flown over to headline the Extremo Open Air Festival in Portugal of June that same year.
Susperia sold over 10,000 albums in the first 3 months and inked a deal with Ponycanyon Records for distribution in Korea. Susperia got a 2-page article in Terrorizer, which garnered the band massive coverage in England, and they were also featured with articles and interviews in the majority of German music magazines in addition to many other countries. The reviews praised the coming of this group and the fresh breath of extreme metal they brought with them. The media was astonished by the powerful debut album and can hardly anticipate what will come next.
What you have been waiting for is here.
On May 6th, 2002 Susperia released their second full-length album entitled Vindication. Again recorded in Abyss Studios, Sweden, Vindication serves as possibly the last piece of work Peter Tägtgren agreed to do before closing down his studio, maybe for good. Peter believed so strongly in the material for the new album that he decided to co-produce and assist totally free of charge! So the music was recorded in Abyss in November and December 2001 whilst Athera hooked up with vocal producer Bjørn Boge (Da Vinci) and recorded all the vocals in BBM studio in Oslo, Norway at the same time.
Susperia are not black, not death, just pure energetic, aggressive METAL. They make a strong team together and you will never know what hit you when they start playing.
Beware! Susperia is on the loose!!
Source: http://www.susperia.net/
