Name HERALD  Origin Estonia  Genre heavy metal  Website http://www.metal.ee/herald  MySpace

Biography     Herald was founded on March 5, 2000. The date is important since on that day Egert the guitar-player and Mart the bassist decided to form another band together. Their previous attempt--a band called Hadara--failed miserably due to constant changes in style and line-up.           Now, after almost a year of pause the dudes decided that some Heavy Metal must be made and boldly picked it up where it was last left off. The beginning seemed very promising and loads of tunes were written (although, in perspective, a lot of the creative output of the period did not seem very high-class). Finding a drummer was troublesome. The band auditioned or wanted to audition a lot of drummers, but most of them did not fit in. Finally, Bremet from Ignorabimus stayed for a while. At the same time another guitarist, young and talented Juks, who at the time played in Bloodrain, joined Herald. Unfortunately, for one reason or the other, most of the creative output of this summer went down the drain and in the end Juks dropped out of the line-up as well. Also Bremet, stretching himself thin between school, work and two bands, could not dedicate enough time to Herald and decided to leave.           The next drummer was not hard to find. In the beginning Rajakas (Whispering Forest) was not totally serious about the Heavy Metal thing, but nevertheless didn't leave the band, which, by now, would be hard to imagine without him. The same autumn Herald went to studio for the first time - to record a song for a Tribute To Judas Priest compilation. About a month and a half the new line-up including Rajakas rehearsed only the Priest cover and didn't even touch their own music, but thanks to that our vision of how to play Heavy Metal was nicely synchronized. In November Herald went to Watergate studio in P?nu to record The Sentinel by Judas Priest. BTW, thanks to that cover version the name of our band finally became fixed. Before that Egert and Mart quarreled constantly about prospective band names, but since no-one came up with a particularly bright idea and no final agreement was reached, it was decided that for the time being the band would be called Herald (a funny concept, since at the time Herald was an instrumental group). But since a band featured on the tribute compilation had to have a name, Mart called Lennart, the head of Guano Productions at the time, and told him we were Herald, and thus the name stuck. We don't really feel the need to change it now, since it's a pretty heavy name after all.           After the studio session, a very active creative period started. At first, though, we rehearsed the old material, but since we had been an instrumetal band and were aspiring to become a vocal-instrumental one, the old stuff was not really fit to be performed. Only one song (Dreamreaper) has remained from the old set; altogether about 15 songs have been lost and forgotten. The new stuff became more and more sophisticated, guitar solos grew longer and powerful distorted bass took care of the background (since we still didn't have a second guitarist. We tried several, but for one reason or the other none of them were included in the band). About five or six new pieces were born, but by now we only play two of them (Ice Nine, and a song that has by now sprouted vocals, Last March Ever). It became more and more clear to us that we could not remain an instrumental band.           In the year 2001           we started a vehement search for a singer. Thanks to Rajakas we hooked up with Mart Kalvet (Whispering Forest). Already in the second rehearsal he surprised us with his excellent Heavy Metal screams and high-pitched wails. At that moment we felt that something could become of us, and that the line-up was good. Soon we got our first offer for a gig, a bikers' St. John's Night Bonfire in Puivere organized by MC Madallend ("Low Flight"). During the extremely busy few months we wrote and polished a few totally new songs, including My Judgement Cometh; The Swarm, the Hive, the Empire and Hounds On My Trail. At the glorious night we were ready to rock, but due to problems with fluctuating power supply the gig together with Metsat?l had to be cancelled. The crowds were no doubt dissapointed, but we definitely grieved so much more...           Fortunately it didn't take long for Suss (a concert promoter and drummer in several bands and projects, including Must Missa, Manatark and Tribute to Running Wild) to offer us a gig at the terrace of Bremen Bierstube, which was our debut live performance. (In case anybody's interested, we have a video recording of the gig, with "special effects" and everything). From that point on things went constantly uphill, we got drenched to our necks in gig offers and wrote some new material (Battalion Berserk). The next big step was Safari Rock (November 2001), a band contest we didn't win, but got to the finals and received a bunch of trophies (general favourite of the audience (thanks and hails to our small but dedicated fandom), the best voice, the best guitarist, the musician who performed the most... that's probably it).           One of the things we realized thanks to the Safari event was a dire need for the second guitarist, which was soon fulfilled by Tauno who had seen our performace in the Safari Rock finals as well. As soon as Taunts learned the ropes and was incorporated into the band, he started offering up his own ideas. For example, the song "Hell Brigade" is written by him. Our so-called "hit" Heavy Metal Wakes the Beast also dates back to this time. The new and improved line-up gave a few quick concerts. Taunts's debut night with Herald was at Depoo (another biker event organized by MC Madallend); soon after that we also played Hard Rock Club. The next obvious step was a demo recording. It was pondered and discussed for long, until finally, in May 2002, Herald stepped over the threshold of another studio. The self-released demo recording on printed CDR, with good quality b&w printed sleeve and containing 30 minutes/six songs of uncompromising Heavy Metal was released in the diabolically hot summer of 2003.           In the summer of 2002           Kaspar Toome, a musician and promoter from MKDK offered us as the only Heavy Metal band in the prospective bunch a chance to demonstrate our interpretations of the late maestro's music in October, at the Jimi Henrix birthday event at the Bar of the Von Krahl Theatre. During the preparations for the concert a change of bass-players took place; Mart Veski was replaced by Viki, who also plays guitar in Must Missa. The gig at October 23 together with Phlox, the Guitar Studio Of the Old Town Music House, Luarvik Luarvik and the local Russians Green Spirit, where in addition to our own songs we also performed the classic Hendrix tunes Foxy Lady and Manic Depression, was the "baptism of fire" in Herald for Viki.