Biography
Chaosbreed’s album Brutal lives up to its name through the Finnish group’s chosen style of raw underground death metal and black metal. The five-piece outfit delivers music that is ferociously dense, relentlessly heavy, and devoid of any softening touches, following the same uncompromising path taken by numerous Scandinavian death metal and black metal acts that emerged from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland across the late 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Their recordings, which occasionally incorporate hardcore elements, fuse American and European influences drawn from Obituary, Entombed, Dismember, Autopsy, Morbid Angel, and the foundational Slayer. The musicians have additionally named Carcass, an early grindcore pioneer, among their inspirations, yet Chaosbreed avoids the strict grindcore template of maintaining an unrelentingly rapid tempo throughout an entire performance; instead the band shifts between varying speeds to pummel listeners.
The lineup came together in spring 2003 when vocalist Taneli Jarva united with bassist Oppu Laine, drummer Nalle Österman, and guitarists Esa Holopainen and Marko Tervonen. Each member had previously played in other Finnish death metal and black metal groups: Tervonen with Moonsorrow, Jarva with Sentenced, Impaled Nazarene, and the Black League, and Österman with Gandalf, the melodic death metal and black metal band distinct from both the late-1960s psychedelic act of the same name and the new-age artist Gandalf. Holopainen and Laine had both performed in Amorphis, the durable Finnish death metal band Holopainen co-established with drummer Jan Rechberger in 1990; Laine had also spent time in Mannhai. Chaosbreed’s earliest output was the five-track demo EP Unleashed Carnage. Three songs were initially offered as free MP3 downloads on the band’s website, but after the group generated attention within Nordic extreme metal communities the EP received a commercial release, first through the independent Western European label Rising Realm Records and subsequently via a licensing agreement with Phoenix, Arizona-based Crash Music for the American market. Century Media issued the band’s debut full-length album, Brutal, in 2004.
The lineup came together in spring 2003 when vocalist Taneli Jarva united with bassist Oppu Laine, drummer Nalle Österman, and guitarists Esa Holopainen and Marko Tervonen. Each member had previously played in other Finnish death metal and black metal groups: Tervonen with Moonsorrow, Jarva with Sentenced, Impaled Nazarene, and the Black League, and Österman with Gandalf, the melodic death metal and black metal band distinct from both the late-1960s psychedelic act of the same name and the new-age artist Gandalf. Holopainen and Laine had both performed in Amorphis, the durable Finnish death metal band Holopainen co-established with drummer Jan Rechberger in 1990; Laine had also spent time in Mannhai. Chaosbreed’s earliest output was the five-track demo EP Unleashed Carnage. Three songs were initially offered as free MP3 downloads on the band’s website, but after the group generated attention within Nordic extreme metal communities the EP received a commercial release, first through the independent Western European label Rising Realm Records and subsequently via a licensing agreement with Phoenix, Arizona-based Crash Music for the American market. Century Media issued the band’s debut full-length album, Brutal, in 2004.
Albums
