Forcefeedfailed is a Finnish progressive metal band that, in its current form, has existed for less than five years. In the last few years we’ve found a new direction and a new way to express ourselves musically: a song should feel like a life, or a slice of it. It has highs and lows, it breathes, it’s dynamic — and the story doesn’t always fit into a commercial three-and-a-half minute frame.

For anyone who wants to dig a bit deeper, here’s the story.

The first version of Forcefeedfailed started to form almost twenty years ago. After Janne’s previous band, Morbid Dream, had already seen its most glorious days, there was finally a chance to do something completely new. It didn’t take much effort to convince his brother Jani to join on keyboards — the two already had countless hours of playing together.

Soon after that, Mikael Salo joined on bass. For a while the band rehearsed with programmed drums, before finding Niko Nikula to take over behind the kit. The band played as an instrumental quartet for quite some time, until they finally had some luck and found a vocalist: Tuomo Häikiö. The first EP, “Reveal,” was released in 2012.

After that, Mikael decided to focus on other opportunities (cheers mate, beers?), and we somehow got extremely lucky. Teemu Hiltunen joined on bass — not just as a killer musician, but quickly as a friend.

Our first full-length album, “Tides,” came out in 2017. We were honestly happy with where the band was heading: finally becoming more productive, and playing more shows.

A few years later, we hit a wall. In 2019, Tuomo left the band, which forced us to search for a new vocalist for a long time. Then Covid-19 hit and made everything worse.

And then something unexpected happened.

We stopped looking for a new vocalist — because we realized we already had one. Janne Pulkkinen, our guitarist and main songwriter, had been recording rough vocal line demos as “guides” for a possible new singer. Those demos convinced the rest of the band that we didn’t need to look any further.

After some hands-behind-the-back pressure and a few kicks in the nuts over several months, Janne agreed to take on both vocals and guitar.