Leverage (Jyväskylä/Helsinki, Finland) hits many of you right out of the bushes, but in a flashy way. Finnish Heavy Rock has long traditions and tough merits, but this type of old school melodic heavy rock with a shade of progressive flavour hasn't been heard from Finnish bands before. It all started with a heavy dose of Rainbow, but how did we get here, and where has Leverage been hiding all these years? Songwriter-guitarist Tuomas Heikkinen has a few words on the subject:

The story so far...

'As little kids, me and Lampinen used to sit in a pile of snow on the schoolyard reading comics, besides that I spent most of my free time at home sitting with my headphones on listening to Stargazer by Rainbow a hundred times over. Lampinen said he wanted to get to play the bass in Budokan, I wanted to be Ritchie Blackmore. In a way that still hasn't changed.

A bit later I used to teach heavy rock guitar to kids, I was about 17 or so, and then this kid by the name of Torsti walked in. He picked up all my licks in no time wanting to play faster than anyone else. He still does.

I heard Heino sing for the first time through a friend's cell phone recording. He sang like a superstar while the others tried to keep up with acoustic guitars. I knew immediately that here's the man that I had been looking ever since moving to Helsinki to find a great singer.

Valtteri and Niskala dig all kinds of prog-metal, other than that they are good guys....

So this is the bunch we call Leverage, besides working on our music weve lately been playing classic heavy rock cover gigs, the response has been awesome, when the album gets out well get to play our own stuff, its about time, too. Were ready and well set with everything.

A promo single with songs Fifteen Years and Marching To War was delivered to the subscribers of the Inferno magazine this spring, a few thousand of them. Radio stations have played the single during the spring and summer, besides those two,a song called Superstition was played on the TV through the Hockey World Championships. We've received a lot of good feedback. Our manager Jani Jalonen visited Japan in May and came back with a licence contract for our album Tides, a trip well worth taking.

The old classics of heavy rock are about witches, dragons. all this cool stuff. We have stories of revenge, getting lost in the desert, shipwrecks, war etc. Or maybe they are about rage, sorrow, love, vanity, being ones own self, temptations you be the judge...

Grown-ups playing heavy rock, some might think it's a joke, they obvioiusly haven't had the privilege of doing it. We're not one of those ultrafast, double bassdrum, odd time rollercoaster progpowermetal bands, that scene is well covered in Finland by some awesome musicians, our music bows to the great heritage of melodic heavy rock with a modern touch.

Tides is one hell of an album. We had the freedom to make it exactly the way we wanted, and we feel we nailed it to the last note and cover detail. Leverage is not a boy band, a studio band, a wannabe-band, project band or whatever fake band. Leverage is a true and honest heavy rock band, for the love of heavy rock.'

- Tuomas Heikkinen

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