History
The early years (2004-2007)
The story of Gravity Shield started at some point during the year 2004 when Mika Korhonen (guitar) and Jarno Eskelinen (bass at the time) decided to start playing some good music with each other. Soon after that I noticed my opportunity to sneak into a group that somehow started to look like a band. Because this was a group that originates from a small village, the natural continuity was to “persuade” friends into it so that the whole band would come together. Soon Janne Huttunen was found sitting behind the drum kit. This line-up smashed songs that concentrated on covers for quite some time until it became apparent that the group badly needed a vocalist.
So Janne decided to be the singer, Jarno jumped behind the drums and Mikas younger brother Niko was found to play the bass (talk about small circles huh?) and so the band was complete. In the early days the band was called Centre of Eternity, which in its all glorious glimmer was nothing more than a mere rip-off from the Ozzy Osbourne song of the same name. Rumour has it that the guys once tried to play with synthesizers but that story ended before it even started. The band still played covers for some time until little by little ideas for own songs started to take shape. At this point we were living somewhere between years 2005 and 2006. The year 2006 was surprisingly busy time even though I spent my days in the army, the true work however started in the following year. When it became clear that the focus was being moved from covers to own material, the band decided to change its name for something a bit more original. Henceforth the band was known as Gravity Shield. The name has a connection to science and space meaning an area where the effects of gravity are overruled. In the world of music this might portray that there are no real boundaries to what the band can do musically. The year 2007 culminated in December on the first real public performance at K-Klubi where the band warmed-up the stage for another local act called Raven Claw.
Time to get more serious (2008)
The year 2008 started with high hopes. The band managed to get training facilities from the very heart of the city of Kuopio and more songs started to exist. The band even went to record a demo in the local studio owned by the youth center of Kuopio, which was supposed to be called “Theatre of Tragedy”. During the sessions in the studio however, the band realized that there were something wrong in the personal level and after series of conversations the roads between Janne and the rest of the band took a different direction. Because of this incident, the recently recorded demo never actually saw the light of day and was sent to the band archives.
From that point on the singing parts were divided with Mika and Niko, Mika mainly sang the clean parts and Niko did the howls and growls. In the beginning things worked smoothly with this new line-up, more songs were made and some shows were done in different parts of Kuopio during the summer of 2008. One of the absolute highlights was a show at Henry’s Pub in front of a nearly sold out audience at the IOP ’08 ROCKS event. At the end of the summer the band packed its gear and went to Outokumpu to record another demo which was about to be titled “Divine Wind”. But bad luck seemed to follow the band and right after the demo was completed, Mika and Niko said they’d had enough. So Erno and Jarno were on their own with only a vision of the band in their hands. What a wonderful way to start the year 2009, don’t you think?!
Ground Zero and aftermath (2009-2010)
The guys decided that this was not the end for Gravity Shield and search for new members started instantly, and not before long the new line-up was complete. Teemu Kauppinen, a long-time friend was found to play the guitar, this was an easy decision because Erno and Jarno had played with Teemu before in one particular Iron Maiden cover-project. Teemu Tiainen, whom the gods sent from Savonlinna to aid us in our cause, picked the bass and the vocalist Arto Ala-Seppälä took his place behind the microphone. Arto has also been a member in a band called No More from Kuortane so the guy knew his business. At this point the band were more motivated, full of ideas, together as one and simply better than ever before. First proof of this was given when the band entered the band competition for local bands and went straight to finals. Although the victory slipped past the bands fingers, the seeds for a good start were sown.
The band gained a better training place from the center of Kuopio and the recordings for a new demo were started in the summer of 2009. A quantum leap was taken forward musically because both Teemu Kauppinen and Tiainen gave their input into song writing so the material was going to become of course a bit different but also much more colourful than before. Recording demos isn’t cheap and we players are always broke so we decided to record in our own facility. A demo that was going to be called “Ground Zero” started to morph into reality. Of course, doing things on your own has its ups and downs which we learned the hard way (yet again). Nevertheless, we got the job done with a huge assistance of our recording engineer Miska Riekkinen, mixing engineer Sami Ehrukainen and computer expert Vesa Toivonen, and might I say that the demo consisted from three strong songs that have forged into a pretty nice live “hits” even nowadays. Songs like “Oblivion” or the title track itself are bound to be on the live set for years to come. We have also been blessed for getting our own personal photographer Tuulia Hietaniemi to work with us, if you ever need a professional to take great photos, you should seriously call her A.S.A.P.!
We played a couple of good live shows through late ‘09 to early ’10, but a year is nothing without a line-up change here in GS camp so again we had somehow managed to get into a situation where someone has to go in order to get the band itself stay intact (do you manage to picture the formula already?!). After series of conversations we got to the mutual conclusion that Jarno, one of the founding members of Gravity Shield, leaves the band. And by mutual I don’t mean that the conclusion was enjoyable in any way. Sometimes things just get to point where, I guess, everyone has the same ultimate goal but the means to get there are way too different to carry on together.
See the dawn once more… (2010- )
As stressful as the constant personnel change might have been, it goes without saying that we needed a new drummer to continue. This time we tried to stretch out into the “unknown” and started asking in public if anyone was interested in the job. The amount of e-mails we received was pretty surprising (to us at least) but we took it with pride and joy, although in the end we ended up hiring a semi-familiar bloke who was a friend of Teemu Kauppinen. Our new drummer is Eetu Holopainen, we chose him because he has huge potential into becoming one of the greats in drumming and personality-wise he shares the same sick and twisted sense of humour as the rest of the band. This is essential if anyone wants to keep their sanity up and running in this group.
We have played two live shows to this day with the present line-up and things are starting to look more promising as we go on. We have a lot of strong material to even record a full album if not two by now already. The recordings of our new demo is going to start in a few weeks time and we have already booked a couple of live shows to the late 2010 and early 2011. When the new demo is finished, we’re hoping to get this thing going in more solid and stable pace and get more shows even from outside Kuopio and so on.
Looking back all these years I can say with a clear conscience that this is a band that has beaten all the odds possible at this stage of our “career” to say the least. There have been times when there weren’t many people who would’ve placed their bets on this bands survival, but here we still are. Of course the music has changed very much over the years because almost all of the players have changed at some point, but the essence of Gravity Shield has always been there in my mind whatsoever. No-one can say for certain what the future will behold, but we’ll just have to work hard and see where it leads us. Let there be rock!
P.S.
This band would’ve been come and gone a long time ago if it wasn’t for help of some magnificent people around us. All the help we’ve had has blown me away time and time again and I can never thank the ones who have helped us enough. I will not list any names other than those I have already mentioned before but you’ll know who you are, THANK YOU. And of course the greatest respect goes to the people that actually like what we’re trying to do, we’ll see you soon somewhere down the road!
- in Kuopio 3rd of November 2010, Erno Eskelinen, Gravity Shield -
