Nino Laurenne

Abba, Matchbox, Crazy Cavan and lots of finnish rock, pop and other crap. These are my first childhood memories of music, some time before I was completely blown away by the kisses, wasps, van halens and other melodic metal bands. It was probably 1984 when dad got me my first "drum kit", which included two toms and a cymbal. Since the day, I have constantly reminded him how cruel it is to give an aspiring young musician a lame drum kit which is missing such "small" things as a bass drum and a snare. :-)))) On the other hand, getting bored to death with the less-than-satisfactory drums led me to picking up the guitar and in hindsight I can say that it was a good thing.

The real kick-start for my now 20-year-long career as a heavy metal musician was when at the age of 13 I got my first guitar. It was a sunburst Kumika Stratocaster copy. I spent my first year learning how to tune the guitar and soon after that I was playing in my first band with two of my friends, Arc666 and Tuomio (from Impaled Nazarene). We spent countless hours at the rehearsal room playing Twisted Sister, Wasp, Iron Maiden and music from other legendary 80's bands. In the early 90's, I played and sang in a speed/trash group called Antidote. We made 3 records, the first two for German label Shark Records. A 2-week-long European tour in 1993 was a mind blowing experience for a young musician. Antidote's story ended in 1998 when it was time to bury the band. This bitter decision, however, led to me buying a set of studio equipment with a friend of mine so that we could record our own stuff, and maybe some songs of our friends' bands as well. That wasn't a stupid thing to do at all. I have since recorded, mixed and produced countless metal bands, including Amorphis, Lordi, Ari Koivunen (finnish Idols winner 2007), Finntroll, Kiuas, etc. etc. Rather soon after setting up the studio, Thunderstone took its first steps and the rest is history, as they say...