Blowtorch History

First era as Dice

It all started on spring 2014 when drummer Samuli, guitarists Lauri and Janne joined together with bassist Tero. Early years the band focused on creating proper chemistry and rehearsed together playing both covers and some own material. During the first two years the band name was “Dice”. First live performance was played on a private event in October 2014.

From the beginning it was obvious that the main focus of the band is to make our own music and have gigs. Having uncompromising attitude and professional touch, but without losing the fun of playing music together.

The musical genre was still in search at the first. The first songs were quite a variety by style and lyrics were more influenced politically or traditionally told about girls and cars. As Dice we took part to Satakunnan Kansa's Porilainen bändi competition two times without success and recorded some songs. The songs can be found from Soundcloud but you'll need to find them yourself.

In 2015 we had the chance to play our first real live show in Cantina Gringo, Pori. After that it was time to record the first EP, which was released a bit delayed. In the same time Niko stepped in as singer-guitarist. Lauri had filled the vocal spot earlier, but he decided to concentrate on guitar playing. Before Niko we had recorded one song with different singer, but then we noticed together that he had different ambitions as others.

2016 Blowtorch is born

On 2016 was the time to release the delayed EP. Before it the group decided that the name Dice was too over-used and it would be better to have name that does not give you gazillion findings on a search engine. So the name Blowtorch was found. The origin of the name was when the group saw a spaceship crossing Pori and the afterburner had a flame looking a blowtorch. In reality that is bull**it, but it would be better if the real details will remain mostly secret. The three ingredients of name Blowtorch were Lauri, Google translate and typing errors.

Band started to have more gigs and recorded the second EP on autumn 2016 and released it on March 2017. Both early EP:s can be found on Bandcamp, but you'll have to do it yourself.

2017, year of changes

The year 2017 was the year of changes. First on February the original guitarist Janne left the band due to the lack of time and different ambitions. Band continued as four-piece, had some gigs, recorded a third EP and had fun together. But it started to seem that things were not going as well as it looked. The EP was recorded on summer but when the clock turned to fall there was still no improvement on mixing. It seemed that the whole path was going to dead end. We decided to forgot the whole EP and released the only acceptable song "Remedy" as a lyric video on Youtube. It was obvious that we needed to choose the different and narrowed path for our music in the future.

On November Samuli told that he was quitting the band for personal reasons. Luckily the band found quite easily Juhis to replace him. In the same time the group was forced to move from Samuli-controlled rehearsal place to a new site closer to Pori centre. Then after hard practicing we had an opportunity to introduce our new drummer to an audience in the beginning of 2018.

2018, the turbulence continues

However on April 2018 original guitarist Lauri stunned the others that he was moving out of Pori and had to quit the band. That obviously shocked the others and then we decided to have a funeral for Blowtorch. The then-called last gig was held on April 2018 in Annis, a culture house in Pori. The backdrop was placed into the coffin and transported out from stage.

Time flew by and we were training with another guitarist, Joonas and even played together live once (inside party). But that was not going very well and was not productive. We had chance to have three real gigs during the fall and started to think things over. Seemed obvious that Joonas was not the type of guy we needed so we decided to ask Eetu (from Juhis's other band) to become our new guitarist. After the first rehearsal we all agreed that this is it. The new guitarist is found. The group was complete again. Then we talked about the upcoming gigs and decided that it was the time for comeback as Blowtorch and did the "world's fastest comeback", exactly 180 days after the funeral. And we also recorded a single called Celebrate(my Suicide) which was also released on CD single with Void Bearer at February 2019.

This was like totally a new start for the band. Eetu has lots of ideas in his table drawer so we decided to continue the band with different approach and with a new "genre". We could very easily say that Blowtorch is totally different band it was on 2017.

2019, the start of Pulirock

Then 2019 we made new material and had some gigs, first time even outside Satakunta on Bar Rock bear at Vantaa. On summer 2019 we started recording our first album which was named to "Hangoverdose". Some of the songs were old, like Starmachine is on our second EP but some of the songs were made out of the rehearsal jams. The lyrics started to have a red line and we think that we have found our way of music. Pulirock. Please do not check the translation, because there isn't any.

Recording sessions were quite fast. We started on June and ended on August. But when we started the mixing the difficulties started. Problems with mixing, computers and finally the hard disk crashed. Luckily we had the almost-latest backups but there was a mess with configuring the programs. And most of the piss was poured over Niko so he was mentally quite squeezed to dry when the record was complete on November.

Then we had still some cover art and that type work left until the record was ready to be released.

2020, world has turned upside down

We released the first single, Euphoria out of Hangoverdose on January and the second single, Asses on Shoulders in the beginning of February.

The Hangoverdose was released on 21st of February and then we had our album release party in Annis on 29th of February.

After that the world has been changed faster than ever before in our lifetime. All the scheduled gigs were cancelled or postponed for months. We were not able to go rehearsing due to scheduling problems or precautionary issues for three months. Quite a long time without music isn't it...

Finally in the late summer we had some time to start making new songs. We had some riffs and chords ready but they needed to be arranged and put together. After having some scheduling problems due to other bands, building projects and illnesses we had four new songs to present for audience. Then on December we had our first livestream show. It is still available on our Facebook page.

2021, the unknown

We started the recording of an EP on january aiming to release it on march-april (accurate time unknown) and released a new lyric-video from upcoming EP; Drinking at home with no intention of going out, also known as "Kalsarikännit".

After almost 2 years also a gig is coming. Korttelifestarit 2021 at the Pori centre. Nobody knew that this gig would be the last that blowtorch would ever perform. By the look of it... At the end of the year 2021, our front man, lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Niko “Senor Amsterdam” Laaksonen leaves Blowtorch band to focus more on his studies and other musical agendas. Time will tell if Blowtorch will rise again from here...

The story continues...