Arched Fire - Speed/Thrash/Metal from Finland
Interview with Ari, Janne, Kristian and Assu
Interview by Andrew Stanton
Hello and welcome to Inside the Darkness. - Can you tell our readers a bit about your history, please? Ari: We’ve only been together for three years, but there was a thirty-year gap in between. We started the band as 14-15-year-olds in Finnish Lapland. We were all excited about the speed/ thrash wave of the late 80s, and also about the metal and rock bands before that. Arched Fire was our first real band, and although we didn’t really know what we were doing, we played ten gigs and wrote a lot of songs before we called it
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a day in the summer of 1990. Thirty years later we decided to finish what we started. We found the perfect singer, re-created our old songs, wrote some new stuff, got signed by Wormholedeath Records and released our first album ”Remote Control”. Basically, this is everything
Väntänen (rhythm guitar), Mika Rytilahti (bass), Aslak Purojärvi (drums). Mika, Aslak and Ari formed the band inthe spring of 1989, and Janne joined them in October the same year. Kristian stepped in ”a bit” later, in 2019. - What bands did you like growing up? Ari: I got into music when I was ten, I liked 80s heavy rock like WASP, Twisted Sister and many others. Five years later I got into speed/thrash but also rock’n’roll like 70s Alice Cooper and Hanoi Rocks, and punk rock bands as well. Janne: I have always liked many kinds of music and styles.
ck a b t o g d ban e h t n e h ly W l a u t c a g n i eryth v e , r e h t e g . t to s a f y l real d e n e p p ha we wanted to happen in 1989. - Who are your band members? Ari: Kristian Herkman (vocals), Janne Särkelä (lead guitar), Ari
