Description:
Antestor= A Christian extreme metal band formed in 1990 in Jessheim, Norway. The group is credited for starting the whole northern European Christian extreme metal scene with their 1991 demo The Defeat of Satan, according to the liner notes of the writer Michael Bryzak on the band's compilation album of the same title.
Antestor is the only Christian band to have an album released by Cacophonous Records, which has also released records by bands such as Dimmu Borgir, Sigh, and Cradle of Filth. In the 1990s, Antestor, together with Horde, were the only two Christian black metal groups who had a record deal with a secular label.
Antestor= A Christian extreme metal band formed in 1990 in Jessheim, Norway. The group is credited for starting the whole northern European Christian extreme metal scene with their 1991 demo The Defeat of Satan, according to the liner notes of the writer Michael Bryzak on the band's compilation album of the same title.
Antestor is the only Christian band to have an album released by Cacophonous Records, which has also released records by bands such as Dimmu Borgir, Sigh, and Cradle of Filth. In the 1990s, Antestor, together with Horde, were the only two Christian black metal groups who had a record deal with a secular label. The band's only release on Cacophonous, The Return of the Black Death, proved influential for the Christian black metal movement, and has sold over 10,000 copies. During that time, they dubbed their musical style as "sorrow metal" rather than black metal because the black metal movement was publicly affiliated with Satanism in Norway. According to HM Magazine, the progressive elements on the debut album, Martyrium, were possibly ahead of their time in the Norwegian extreme metal scene.
The group has gone through several line-up changes over the years, and currently Antestor consists of the founding guitarist Lars Stokstad (Vemod), vocalist Ronny Hansen (Vrede), bassist Thor Georg Buer, guitarist Robert Bordevik, drummer Henning Børven and keyboardist Nickolas Main Henriksen. The original vocalist Kjetil Molnes (Martyr) and drummer Svein Sander (Armoth) left the band around 2000, when the members of a fellow Norwegian black metal group, Vaakevandring, joined Antestor. The reputive Norwegian extreme metal drummer Jan Axel Blomberg (Hellhammer) played session drums for their 2005 album The Forsaken and Det Tapte Liv EP.
Recent years
New drummer Tony Kirkemo joined the band later in 2005 as live session drummer. The band played live shows rarely and only at explicitly Christian music festivals. Examples of performances the group have made in 2000s include the concerts at Bobfest in 2000 in Stockholm and 2004 in Linköping and at the Nordic Fest 2004 in Oslo.
Some of the members still play in the black metal band Vaakevandring, who played a reunion concert in 2007 together with Antestor at the Endtime Festival held at the end of March 2007 in Halmstad. Antestor performed the concert with numerous session musicians. In this concert the band announced that this is their last live show. In a message in the forum of Endtime Productions and a substantially identical bulletin on the band's MySpace, Lars Stokstad stated that the reasons for the decision were that the last 2 and half years the only consistent members of the band have been Vrede and Vemod, and they have constantly had problems finding musicians willing to commit to Antestor. After three years of hiatus on January 29, 2010, the band launched an official Facebook page. Later they announced new members: Bassist Thor Georg Buer (Grave Declaration), guitarist Robert Bordevik (Grievance, Vardøger), drummer Jo Henning Børven (Morgenroede) and keyboardist Nickolas Main Henriksen (Aspera, Desdemon).
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