To introduce one of my favourite bands 
It happens from time to time, that young fresh bands entitle their debut album with only the bandname. But in the case of finnish band SubUrban Tribe, there is a completely different reason for this measure. The band celebrates the reincarnation of the founding line-up; and after an remarkable amount of good albums by the "old" SubUrban Tribe aswell as of Kyyria, latest stage of singer Ville Tuomio, finally the best of both worlds is unified.
Suburban Tribe´s music is hard to categorize, and they don´t want to fit into any sorting system, but they pity all the recorcdcompany promoters, who are responsible for describing a CD with few words.
Main songwriter Janne Joutsenniemi, who was once member of the band Stone (together with Roope Latvala (Sinergy, Waltari)), melts rock, metal, electro and progressive with strong melodies. From this does result a fundamental aggression, which is the opponent of the overwhelmingly beautiful choruses (for example Watching You, Perfect Dark). So not only the structure of the songs is unique, also having Ville as their singer makes the difference to the loads of talented bands. The ones who know Kyyria (R.I.P.) know what I´m talking about, all the others should not wait and soon check out the madman and his dreadlocks.
It matters to Janne, that the lyrics make sense: "The lyrics are way too important to us for wasting them on something senseless. We definitely don´t sing about parties or drinking beer." (Rock Hard 02/02) Instead he sees his lyrics as landscapes or portraits of different feelings, "it is a short view on life, which flows in front of my eyes" (http://www.wallsoffire.de) The melancholy, expressed in music and lyrics, helps them to handle negative elements. As soon as the feelings are transferred into music, even Janne can smile again. This works fine for the listener, too: Gloomyness, caught into overwhelming hooklines, in the end spreads confidence.
One of my favourite lines comes from the song "Dialogue for one":
Strip away my love
Defuse all of my hate
Peel off the smiles and moans
That I always fake
I´m hollow inside
Exhausted and numb
Talking to me is like a
Dialogue for one
The just mentioned difficult history of founding the band starts around ten years ago. SubUrban Tribe are a group of friends from Helsinki´s suburbs (thus the name). Ville Tuomio was an active member of Kyyria, too, and very soon he focused on this band. So SubUrban Tribe managed to get along with several other singers and released prog- and metal-oriented records at indie-labels. Kyyria were a little bit more successfull than their colleagues, especially with the suberb last album "Inner Wellness" (which I can recommend aswell). 1999 Kyyria broke up; drummer Mika Karppinen a.k.a. Gas Lipstick moved to the Princess Of Darkness, HIM; Bassist Niclas Etelävuori (also member of Amorphis), guitarist Mikael Tanner and keyboarder Santeri Kallio founded for the purpose of optimized workload the band Verenpisara( http://www.verenpisara.com ). Ville Tuomio was leftover and his old band welcomed him with open arms. Unfortunately in the end, genius keyboarder Burton changed the employer and is now also playing in HIM.
The current line-up for SubUrban Tribe is the following:
Ville Tuomio - vocals
Roope Sirén - guitar
Janne Joutsenniemi - bass
Alec Hirst-Gee - drums
Especially when you watch the band live, then you can feel even more than from the record, how happy all involved people are, to finally play together in "perfect" line-up. To me it happened, that after heavy-rotation of this CD in my player, I went to finland because I could not wait anymore until the SubUrbans would appear in Germany (meanwhile they were support of the german electro-metalband oomph! ( http://www.oomph.de ) in 2001 and of danish rockers D-A-D in 2002). So my travel was worth it all, I was totally blown away by their presence on stage. In Finland, the band is headliner, loves to play gigs and do everything for the fans - and Ville T always behaves in a way that the nice men dressed in white can´t be far. A very impressing band!
Discography:
SubUrban Tribe:
-Primitive (1994)
-Purify (1995)
-Panorama (1997)
-Prime Time Collection (Sampler, 1998)
-Elektro 57 (1998)
-SubUrban Tribe (2001/2002)
Kyyria:
-Blessed Ravings (re-release 1998)
-Alien (1997)
-Inner Wellness (1998)
http://www.suburbantribe.com
Other stuff:
Interview with oomph!:
http://www.konzi-tip.de/v2/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=118&page=1
It happens from time to time, that young fresh bands entitle their debut album with only the bandname. But in the case of finnish band SubUrban Tribe, there is a completely different reason for this measure. The band celebrates the reincarnation of the founding line-up; and after an remarkable amount of good albums by the "old" SubUrban Tribe aswell as of Kyyria, latest stage of singer Ville Tuomio, finally the best of both worlds is unified.
Suburban Tribe´s music is hard to categorize, and they don´t want to fit into any sorting system, but they pity all the recorcdcompany promoters, who are responsible for describing a CD with few words.
Main songwriter Janne Joutsenniemi, who was once member of the band Stone (together with Roope Latvala (Sinergy, Waltari)), melts rock, metal, electro and progressive with strong melodies. From this does result a fundamental aggression, which is the opponent of the overwhelmingly beautiful choruses (for example Watching You, Perfect Dark). So not only the structure of the songs is unique, also having Ville as their singer makes the difference to the loads of talented bands. The ones who know Kyyria (R.I.P.) know what I´m talking about, all the others should not wait and soon check out the madman and his dreadlocks.
It matters to Janne, that the lyrics make sense: "The lyrics are way too important to us for wasting them on something senseless. We definitely don´t sing about parties or drinking beer." (Rock Hard 02/02) Instead he sees his lyrics as landscapes or portraits of different feelings, "it is a short view on life, which flows in front of my eyes" (http://www.wallsoffire.de) The melancholy, expressed in music and lyrics, helps them to handle negative elements. As soon as the feelings are transferred into music, even Janne can smile again. This works fine for the listener, too: Gloomyness, caught into overwhelming hooklines, in the end spreads confidence.
One of my favourite lines comes from the song "Dialogue for one":
Strip away my love
Defuse all of my hate
Peel off the smiles and moans
That I always fake
I´m hollow inside
Exhausted and numb
Talking to me is like a
Dialogue for one
The just mentioned difficult history of founding the band starts around ten years ago. SubUrban Tribe are a group of friends from Helsinki´s suburbs (thus the name). Ville Tuomio was an active member of Kyyria, too, and very soon he focused on this band. So SubUrban Tribe managed to get along with several other singers and released prog- and metal-oriented records at indie-labels. Kyyria were a little bit more successfull than their colleagues, especially with the suberb last album "Inner Wellness" (which I can recommend aswell). 1999 Kyyria broke up; drummer Mika Karppinen a.k.a. Gas Lipstick moved to the Princess Of Darkness, HIM; Bassist Niclas Etelävuori (also member of Amorphis), guitarist Mikael Tanner and keyboarder Santeri Kallio founded for the purpose of optimized workload the band Verenpisara( http://www.verenpisara.com ). Ville Tuomio was leftover and his old band welcomed him with open arms. Unfortunately in the end, genius keyboarder Burton changed the employer and is now also playing in HIM.
The current line-up for SubUrban Tribe is the following:
Ville Tuomio - vocals
Roope Sirén - guitar
Janne Joutsenniemi - bass
Alec Hirst-Gee - drums
Especially when you watch the band live, then you can feel even more than from the record, how happy all involved people are, to finally play together in "perfect" line-up. To me it happened, that after heavy-rotation of this CD in my player, I went to finland because I could not wait anymore until the SubUrbans would appear in Germany (meanwhile they were support of the german electro-metalband oomph! ( http://www.oomph.de ) in 2001 and of danish rockers D-A-D in 2002). So my travel was worth it all, I was totally blown away by their presence on stage. In Finland, the band is headliner, loves to play gigs and do everything for the fans - and Ville T always behaves in a way that the nice men dressed in white can´t be far. A very impressing band!
Discography:
SubUrban Tribe:
-Primitive (1994)
-Purify (1995)
-Panorama (1997)
-Prime Time Collection (Sampler, 1998)
-Elektro 57 (1998)
-SubUrban Tribe (2001/2002)
Kyyria:
-Blessed Ravings (re-release 1998)
-Alien (1997)
-Inner Wellness (1998)
http://www.suburbantribe.com
Other stuff:
Interview with oomph!:
http://www.konzi-tip.de/v2/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=118&page=1
