Ensiferum

Ensiferum (Latin: ensiferum, n adj., meaning "sword bearing") is a Finnish folk metal band from Helsinki. The members of the band label themselves as "melodic folk metal". The group has released nine studio albums.

Ensiferum was founded in 1995 by Markus Toivonen (guitar), Sauli Savolainen (bass) and Kimmo Miettinen (drums). In the next year, Jari Mäenpää was taken into the band as singer and second guitar-player. In 1997, the first demo was released, containing three songs.

In 1998, Savolainen and Miettinen left the band and were replaced by Jukka-Pekka Miettinen (Kimmo Miettinen's little brother, then 14 years old) and Oliver Fokin. In January 1999, a second demo was recorded, which although it did not produce a recording deal, boosted the band's confidence. In November 1999 a third demo Hero in a Dream was recorded, and was successful in obtaining a record deal with Spinefarm Records. The logo that appears on all the band's releases was designed for the third demo by Tuomas Tahvanainen, who also designed the logos for the earlier demos. In 2000, the band went into the studio to work on their first album, Ensiferum, which was released in July 2001. In the same year, Meiju Enho joined them as a keyboard player.

In early 2004, after the work was completed on the second album, Iron, Mäenpää was fired from the band due to conflicts between scheduled studio work on his side project Wintersun and touring with Ensiferum. For the tour with Finntroll starting in April, Petri Lindroos from Norther replaced Mäenpää on guitar and as singer, and became a member of the band after the tour. In December 2004, Jukka-Pekka Miettinen left the band and was replaced by Sami Hinkka (Rapture). Fokin also left in 2005, to be replaced by Janne Parviainen.

The new Ensiferum line-up entered the studio later that year to record an EP to be called Dragonheads, which was released in February 2006. As well as the title track, it also contained two reworked demo songs: an Amorphis cover and a short rendition of the Kalevala melody, as well as a medley of three traditional Finnish songs.

In June 2006, Ensiferum released their live DVD, 10th Anniversary Live, which was recorded in Nosturi, Helsinki, on 31 December 2005.

The recording of the third studio album, called Victory Songs, took place between November 2006 and early 2007, and was released on 20 April 2007. A single titled "One More Magic Potion" (after the track of the same name) was released on 7 February. Following the album's release, the band released through the producer's MySpace page, a music video for the song "Ahti", which included all band members featured as extras. The video was released after the album release due to video filming problems.

On 10 September 2007, it was announced that keyboardist Meiju Enho would leave the band. This was posted in a bulletin on their MySpace page and later confirmed on their website. The band used Emmi Silvennoinen of Exsecratus as a touring fill-in. Silvennoinen later became a permanent member of the band during the recording of the From Afar album.