Who are The Rasmus?
HIM ARE STILL NUMBER ONE
The Rasmus may be new, fresh and currently the most talked about band in the
European music scene and as they play typical Scandinavian gothic rock, it seems
they are younger brothers of an already well known Finnish band HIM. Fans of
both bands now fight in different forums about who is better and if it is even
any sense in comparing them. But The Rasmus are most certainly not new in Finland.
They actually have been working together for almost ten years and have done
five albums so far. They just didn´t make it over night and had to take
up things a bit differently. They are a typical band that grew gradually.
The Rasmus first made it at home. The fact is that their music started spreading gradually through lots of concerts from small clubs to large concert halls. The best promotion for this kind of bands is being an opening band for bigger bands (they opened for Roxette and HIM among others), because that gives them a chance to present their music to larger crowds of people at ones.
The guys from The Rasmus started playing together in 1994 as a high school band in Helsinki (they played Metallica and Nirvana songs). They admit that the name of the band doesn´t really mean anything special, they just thought is sounded cool. At the age of 16 they just thought the music scene in Finland sucked and needed a fresh approach. Soon they stared recording their own songs and albums and started getting some local awards. But they had to wait till the year 2001 to make it with their first big hit single F-F-Falling: they started touring around Scandinavia and realised the album Into also in Germany. At this point Europe was ready and two years was just enough time for the guys to became famous with the hit single In The Shadows and the album Dead Letters all over the continent.
Even though Lauri (diplomatically) points out that HIM are still number one in Finland, we have to acknowledge the fact that The Rasmus are being nominated for Best Nordic act (which they also won) at the EMAs this year. Bye the way: “Dead Lettes” is an expression for the letters that never get to the ones they were written to.
And who are The Rasmus? Lauri is the singer who was encouraged by other band members to smoke more cigarettes if his voice didn´t sound rough enough. Pauli is a guitar player who produces other Finnish bands at his ?free time? and has already won an Finnish grammy award for best producer. The drummer Aki joined the band in 1999, before that he was selling T-shirts and other stuff at their concerts. ?When I played with them once, Pauli invited me into the band, which was a very good thing for me since I pretty much suck at everything else but playing drums.? The bass player Eero is the calmest member of the band which is not a surprise since he practises yoga.
>> The text below the picture says: New stars from Finland The Rasmus – Their ?dead letters? have thousands of recipients.
___________________________________________________________________________
** My comment: This
article was printed in a Slovenian newspaper called DELO in Ocober 2003. I tried
to translate it exactly as it was written, although some facts were obviously
not checked out. This was the first article written about The Rasmus in Slovenia,
I think, so it is basically nothing new here, only some basic information about
the band and their history. There are mostly things about them that you can
read on any Rasmus web site, which is probably what the reporter did. **