Biography
Vortech was formed in January 2000 by Juha Untinen and Tero Konola during their first band rehearsal session. Originally it was about learning to play their respective instruments, but the direction was quickly set for writing original music and recording it by themselves. The first year of the band netted three demos with a wide variety of songs which were also featured in the Tornio city charts at the original mp3.com. The year 2001 ended with a three-song live performance at the Kevari Music Exhibition at Club Jesperi, Tornio where the band was joined by Samuli Tarvainen on bass guitar.
The next year was a little bit quieter in the band front save for a few rehearsals with Rami Moilanen on drums and Tero on bass. Two new songs were written during the summer of 2002, but then nothing much happened at all for the next two years. Meanwhile Tero was working with Kollapse and later founded Relativity with Mikko Nurmos from Kollapse. With everything quiet in the Sound Ogre front, Juha joined Relativity in early 2004.
After a long silence, it was time to resume the work with Sound Ogre in late 2004. It was time to once again advance in production quality and the best way to learn new tricks would be to start working on some older Sound Ogre songs and improve their sound and structure. The result was the first EP release for the band and Extinct was released in October 2004 through Mikseri.net. The EP featured a selection of the most popular Sound Ogre demo tracks with some of the songs in an all-new structure.
With the good experiences from making the EP, it was quickly followed up by the first new Sound Ogre material written in almost 3 years. The song writing flowed very well with a new direction towards a more progressive sound. Songs were finished in quick order and posted at Mikseri.net for feedback. Finally six full songs were finished and it was time to release the collection as Asphyxiation in March 2005. Around the same time, Juha joined Coldway, where Tero had already been playing for a while.
It was evident that Sound Ogre no longer was what it used to be with Tero being busy with Relativity and Coldway and the overall sound of the band being completely different from the original style. So with Tero's departure it was time to rename the band to suit the new direction. Vortech was born in late fall of 2005. The band name originated from the Cubanate song duo Vortech I/II on the album Cyberia. It was later discovered to be a car part manufacturer too, but apparently they don't mind the coincidence.
So, what do you do when you have a fresh new table to start from? Why you start writing new songs! During the last weeks of Juha's military service in the Finnish Defence Forces four thrash metal flavoured songs were written, all to be featured in the first full length release. With another four songs and two electronic music influenced pieces there was all the material needed for the first album, titled Conclusion and released on April 2006. The album brought changes in the song writing methods too. All the songs were tracked and mixed on Cubase which was a big step up from the previous recording software, Acid.
With no time to twiddle thumbs, the work for a new full length album began just two months after the release of Conclusion. A lot of songs were written during the following six months, with ten of them making to the final recording sessions conducted in December 2006. The songs were then recorded at Juha's home studio Liberty Street Studios over a period of two months. Finally all the lyrics were written for the songs. Unfortunately things didn't quite work out as planned when it came to recording the vocals. Fast forward four months, Matti "Kraken" Särkimäki finally completed his final vocal parts and it was time to finish up the album. Wasteland was finally released in September 2007.
With a large number of songs already written by the release of Wasteland, the next album was completed in a much quicker order with the main tracking starting a mere one and a half months after the release of Wasteland. The period between December 2007 and January 2008 also marked the time when all the lyrics were finished for the album. Then finally all of Matti's vocals were recorded at the Siwa Studios/ Relativity rehearsal space in late February 2008. And with the majority of the mix already being finished, the album was released in March 2008.
It was also time to consider making a CD print of all the full length albums released so far. With a little bit of querying and tweaking, it was then decided to go with the printing. In mid-June 2008, the CDs became available, and a bit later on a worldwide distributor was found. All the albums can be bought through TheGround.com. A few weeks later the song writing process for the next Vortech album began. By late July, a total of six full songs were finished with more coming at a steady pace.
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