Turisas

Turisas is a Finnish folk metal band from Hämeenlinna. It was founded in 1997 by Mathias Nygård and Jussi Wickström and named after an ancient Finnish God of war.
Turisas is a folk metal band, incorporating elements of power metal and symphonic metal. Turisas is known to play most of their solos on electric violin, as opposed to traditional guitar solos. The album title Battle Metal has given rise to the term "battle metal" being used as a description of Turisas' genre (used mainly by Metal Hammer magazine and its readers) but it is not yet recognised as a canonical metal subgenre.

On October 28, 2005, guitarist Georg Laakso was badly injured in a car accident and due to the extent of his spinal cord injuries, on July 12, 2006 issued a statement of his permanent resignation from the band on the official website. Nevertheless, the band continued to work on their second album, titled The Varangian Way, which was released in early 2007. Jussi Wickström recorded all guitars on the album.
Mathias Nygård revealed in the January 2007 edition of Terrorizer magazine that the touring musicians Hannes Horma, Olli Vänskä, Janne Mäkinen and Antti Laurila had been added to the band as full-time members, taking them up to an 8-piece act. It later turned out that of the two accordion players, only Mäkinen had become an official member. Laurila is no longer a touring musician for the band. On February 19, 2007, keyboardist Antti Ventola posted a message on the Turisas discussion forum announcing that he and the band had parted ways. This was later confirmed by the rest of the band. Mathias Nygård performed the keyboards on The Varangian Way and Turisas are presently using backing tracks to replicate them on stage.

In January 2008, accordion player Janne "Lisko" Mäkinen disappeared mysteriously in Amsterdam. For the upcoming tour dates in spring 2008 Turisas announced Netta Skog as a step-in accordionist. She had already helped the band on the European tour in October–November 2007. Netta was soon after added to the band on a full-time base.
After a string of festivals in the Summer of 2008, in September the band started a long tour through the United States and Europe in support of DragonForce. This tour ended in March 2009, and the band then took part in a new European tour with Cradle of Filth and Moonspell, dubbed the "Filthfest Tour 2009", in April and May 2009. The band played at Wacken Open Air in early August 2009 and also played at Bloodstock Open Air in Mid August 2009. The band took time off at the end of 2009 to make a new album and then planned to return as fully-fledged band no longer supporting others. In 2010 the band concentrated on finishing the recordings of the upcoming third album. Still, the band did a short tour in Asia and Australia in May 2010, including headline concerts in Sydney and Melbourne, two gigs in China, a gig in Shanghai World Expo 2010 and a gig in Japan.

As of March 2010, Turisas announced they are in the studio working on their new album; since then, the band has documented the recording process in a series of studio diary videos on YouTube. The title for the upcoming album, Stand Up and Fight, was revealed on November 11, 2010: the album was released through Century Media on February 28th in Europe and March 8th in North America. New song called The March of the Varangian Guard was performed at the band's Finnish gigs in October 2010. On 17th December 2010, the title track "Stand Up And Fight" was released as a free download on the band's website.
The band have been announced to take part in tours in Mexico/ North America/ Canada with Cradle of Filth, the other supporting bands being Nachtmystium and Daniel Lioneye beginning at the end of January 2011 and in Europe with Die Apokalyptischen Reiter on March–April 2011. They will also be touring England with Crimfall as the supporting band, they shows will also include local support bands at select dates.