History

On early 2009, Essedarius was formed under the name of "Powerfest". The band was formed by Ollipekka Toimela. He quit from a band earlier. Ollipekka was excited, and after a couple of days he invited their first bassist, Jesse Illikainen. It took some time to get new members since Sodankylä, where the band was formed, is a small town (9.000 inhabitants). On early days of summer, Sammeli Lepola joined the band as drummer. Ollipekka started composing their first tracks called Slave Politics and Wander Around. With this consistence, the band lasted about half a month. Drummer, Sammeli Lepola was kicked due to differences in musical visions. Jesse's brother, Joona took a place as a lead guitarist. Then, the whole thing started struggling. Joona chose to be the drummer instead. With this consistence, the band started to run again. Eventually, after christmas, there started to be problems around. Ollipekka Toimela was kicked out of band due to his bossy and dominating attitude. A day after, he was taken back to the band. Also the band found a singer, after long searches. Teemu Hietala was taken to the band as a vocalist. The band was up for a couple of weeks, and then problems started to arrive again. The band started looking for a new name on christmas, and the decision was still not made when it was January. Also, the band managed to record a demo with 6 tracks, but differences in musical points of views stopped the progress. Jesse, Joona, Teemu and Ollipekka then started to look for a guitarist. Over christmas Ollipekka had learned to do many different techniques with soloing, and decided to step up to lead guitarist. After one day of searching, Ville Kulmala joined the band as second guitarist. At this point, band ended up with name "Essedarius". Then the band managed to start from scratch, and started composing new songs. On march 2010 they released their debut, "To The Unseen Dark" EP. It is a combination of melodic yet powerful death metal, vicious lyrics from scandic mythologies and black metal-ish appereance (as seen in Gra'ah). It includes 4 songs; Crossing Skies, Fields Of Fate, Gra'ah, To The Unseen Dark. From the first day they were published, positive reviews were sent. The band planned to record a full-lenght album on summer 2010, but the plans were postponed due to line-up problems. Due to Teemu not taking enough part in the band activities and orders, he was left out in May 2010. Ollipekka Toimela replaced him, and take the role of guitarist-vocalist. The band's musical style changed strictly to melodic death metal. Also the recording of the little demo before the full-length album had beginned.

(Last updated 28.6.2010 by Ollipekka Toimela)