Description
A:
Käärme rakasti minua
Valtaistuin
Houre
B:
Henki-mieli-liha
Tunnustus II
The Carnival was born in the twilight of the swollen metal scene at the end of the nineties. The rising metal scene of the decade had reached its highest top to become ridiculous entertainment machinery. Top ten black metal bands, calculating business, no-one can deny: the underground feeling was gone.
Bored to the lousy metal scene the young lads from Kajaani, Finland decided to return to the dirty sounds of the raging past. The first steps of the band still carried the deep burned mark of thrash and black metal in the vein of Bathory with strong influence of hardcore madness in the vein of the legendary Terveet Kädet. After endless amount of rehearsal demos filled with infernal hatred The Carnival released their first effort: “A Splendid Time Is Guaranteed For All” -demo. It was shitty thrashblack stuff with a HC touch.
The feedback was very contradictory, the HC-audience seemed to think that the music too metallic for them and the metallers were like “what the fucking punk shit is this?!” That is probably the cross that The Carnival will always bear. Too punk for the metallers, too metal for the punks.
At the end of the 2001 The Carnival started to record the debut self titled 7″EP. Läjä Äijälä (from TK fame) wrote the lyrics and created the cover art. The whole picture was starting to find it’s true shape. The Carnival 7″EP was released in the beginning of 2002. It includes four tracks of powerful HC with strong thrash influences from the 80’s. Hardcore is the name of the game. There was also some more blackish thrash stuff recorded at the 7″ -sessions that has been now re-released.
One year later The Carnival II 7″EP (2003) was released. The EP was even more devastating piece of destruction than the first one! The sound was just as rude but there was more tightness, brutality and mayhem in the music.
The Carnival III 7″EP was released in 2004 and the EP-trilogy was complete. Perhaps it will be relased on one LP someday? The third one was one step further to total madness, the recording and mixing process being one hazy, confused blur.
At late summer 2005 The Carnival did their first European minitour which was unbelievably great. Totally rude gigs with intensity and chaos!
“Split with Enormity” miniCD/cassEP was released 2005 and The Carnival got some surprisingly positive feedback from it. For example the Terrorizer magazine got pretty excited about the band’s ugly, no-compromise noise:
“- -wild, supercharged, riotous blast of souped up punk with wild, supercharged, riotous screamed vocals hurtling along at about three million bpm. Fuzzy, rough as hell and brandishing instant appeal and arse-kicking attitude.”
2007 The Carnival finally released Kivulias-EP (“Kivulias” means “painful” in English), their most violent and in-your-face product yet. It was about time, as the first tracks of the EP were recorded back in 2005! To support the release, the band did their second European tour.
Lately the Carnival has been up to a lot; their third European tour plus lots of concerts in- and outside of their native country, and a few records as well, the noisy-as-hell split EP’s with Kuolema & Creepy Crawlie (Overlords of Punk, 2009) and Valium Kiharat (Kajaani, 2010).
2010 also saw the coming of the band’s longest record yet, the 12″MLP titled Maasta (“from the soil” or “about a land”) which is an obscure mix between old school metal and 82-hardcorepunk, the sound being raw yet more powerful than ever.
Right now The Carnival is writing music for their next LP, and some splitted EP’s are also under consideration – one with the thrash metallers Malicious Death already agreed.
But who knows definitely what the future will bring?
We do: insanity and death.
