So we travelled to a little town called Salo to do some songs in a poxy but pleasant 8-track studio. The engineer in the studio was Teemu Horto (ex-God’s Lonely Men and No Shame). All went well and our first EP (500 copies) came out ’88.
So we had a record but nothing much seemed to happen -few concerts and some interviews.
In the beginning of ’89 we went to a studio in order to make a tape for an LP even though no publisher was in sight -for some reason we never asked Jeki about making theLP with us.
Well what do you know -a bloke (Rudiger Thomas, Teenage Rebel Records) from Germany contacted us. He had heard our EP and was going to visit Finland in the summer. He asked if he could stay at my place and come to see us training or doing a concert. We did a concert and played the tape to him and he said yes. After a while he went back to Germany and we started to make the cover for the LP. Not too long after that another record label from Germany contacted us. The name of the label was Knock-out records. They told us they would like to do a live-LP with us. The recording was supposed to take place in Germany or Holland. They also arranged a 15-concert tour for us with a German band called the Shaddox.
At the same time I was forced to tell our drummer Tony to leave the band. Mike changed to drums and we started to look for a bass player. After a while we found a guy called Antti. He seemed to be fast to learn and was also very laid-back and funny.
The LP Back from Nowhere came out in December ’89 (1000 copies, 225 in orange vinyl and the rest black) as well as the reissue of the EP. The tour was supposed to start in January. So we trained as hell and everything seemed to be going well until 2 weeks before the tour Mike (who at the same time was playing drums for The Cretins) told us he was not going to come. There was nothing else to do but take Tony back. In order to get him the passport I had to pay his fines (700 euros) and so we ran out of money before the tour got even started.
story continues -->>
Mike became the bass player and we kept on training and doing modest recordings.
The next step was our first concert in the dance hall of our school (Sampo). The year must have been ’86.The concert went well even though too many people didn’t show up. The concert was videotaped but the tape is probably lost forever.We did another concert in the same place the same year. We also got new training place in the garage of Tonys parents. There we could train more and this time mostly on weekends. We did also many recordings there (many of them very good) but as always they’re lost. In fact there is one left and some of the songs in that tape are included in the records.
Our first “real” concert was in a youth center called Vuoltsu, Tampere (the year must have been '87). Jarza the singer of Turun Tauti was also there (I had invited him to see us) and he thought we were good enough to play in his hometown Turku. So he arranged us to play there with few other bands. At the time of the concert it was only the 3 of us on stage because Mike had been hurt in a speed metal concert while doing some stage diving. So I sang and played the bass. And once again we changed our training place this time to a school (Nekala) where I was working. I also got to know the guys of Kohu-63 as they borrowed our training place.
We did more modest tapes -we even tried to get into a national band contest by the name of SM-rock. They thought we were too minimalistic and primitive. The record companies seemed to think the same until Jeki and his Raktor Records came along.
