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Information:
The Rasmus is a Finnish rock/pop-band.
The members of the group are Lauri Ylönen, Eero Heinonen, Aki Hakala and Pauli Rantasalmi.
History:
Eero and Lauri have been close mates since they met in the third grade.
Pauli met Eero and Lauri in junior high at the beginning of the 90's.
The first version of the band came together in late 1994, at the age of 16.
In the beginning, they played covers of Metallica and Nirvana, but after that, they decided to make their own music.
Since then writes Lauri all their songs.
In the group were Lauri as vocalist and songwriter, Pauli as guitarist, Eero as bassist and Janne as the drummer.
The Rasmus played their first show at school in December 1994, at a Christmas party.
At this early stage they were called Sputnik, and later they changed it to Anttila before becoming Rasmus.
The word "Rasmus" comes from Trashmosh, a mix between Trash music and Mosh pit.
Mosh Pit is the spot right in the middle in front of the stage, where you're bound to get squashed and stomped upon as
everyone is jumping like crazy.
In 1995 they met their manager Teja Kotilainen, who saw them at The Oranssi club and wanted them to record some songs.
They had to get a job to collect money to pay their single, and they had to stick posters up around the city.
"I can still smell the glue" Lauri laughs.
In December later that same year they released their first single "1st"
The sound was funkier than it is today, and some song had a twitch of rap.
And now Warner showed interest and signed the boys and in May 1996 Rasmus released their first album "Peep"
which sold gold.
Back then, they were sponsored by Pepsi.
The band passed the gruelling limit of performing over hundred gigs in a year's time.
Shortly after that, they crawled back into the studio and recorded their second album 'Playboys'.
It didn't take long to sell that album gold too.
Soon after, Rasmus received their first Finnish Grammy, (called Emma in Finnish), in the category of Best New Act.
In 1999, they release their new album, 'Hellofatester'.
The Single,'Liquid', was voted, by both critics and fans as The Year's Best Single.
In November 2000 Janne left the band and moved to Thailand.
Aki took his place behind the drums after they jammed together.
"Pauli asked me to join after we had jammed together. Which is great, because I pretty much suck in everything else
but playing the drums", Aki laughs sarcastically.
Before that, Aki sold The Rasmus merchandise at their shows.
At the same time they changed record company and their name from Rasmus
to The Rasmus.
The group's name had been confused with the Swedish DJ Rasmus so they added a definite article.
In 2001, The Rasmus were ready for a major breakthrough. After signing to
Playground Music Scandinavia in Stockholm(Sweden), the band came back with a
smash hit single "F-F-F-Falling".
The single shot like a bullet straight to number one, selling Platinum and being the biggest hit of the year in Finland.
They made their fourth album 'Into' in Stockholm, an album they released all over Scandinavia and also in Germany.
'Into' has sold over 67 000 to date, which is well over double platinum!
After the success of 'Into'and 'F-F-F-Falling', The Rasmus performed at every major music festival in Finland.
They have supported a lot of artists lately, like HIM, The Red Hot Chili Peppers
and the last one was Roxette on their Scandinavia tour in front of 40.000 people.
The Rasmus traveled in Europe, did promotion and performances on TV
shows and were interviewed by European music press.
Following the tour with the Spanish rock band Dover the band flew to Italy to record a live acoustic performance with
Viva TV and do several interviews.
The Rasmus then flew quickly to Finland for the Finnish Grammy Awards Show where they performed a song and swept all the
major categories by collecting new Grammies for:
Best band, Best single (F-F-F-Falling), Best rock/pop band and Album Of The Year.
The Rasmus returned to Sweden to record, because they wanted to work again with Mikael Nord Anderson and Martin Hansen
at Nord Studios, who were also responsible for producing the massively successful album 'Into'.
They recorded their fifth and new album, 'Dead Letters'.
The guys watched loads of horror movies to put the orbit on the album.
A quote from the band : "We watched so many horror movies that each of us had nightmares", they said, while
laughing.
Lauri smoked a lot of cigarettes to make his voice more rough.
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