Stormburner is a heavy metal band from the land of Vikings, Sweden.
This vocal-instrumental ensemble was founded not long ago (namely in 2016) by two heavy metal professionals.
And today we bring to your attention our interview with our leader Manowar fan club Volodomyr Kornienko with the founder and vocalist of Stormburner, Mike Stark and Tommi Korkeamäki.
It’s worth adding that you can purchase the band’s debut album from the band’s official website and listen at the full album at Youtube.
1) What Does Your Band Name Mean? How did it appeared?
-Mike: It means just what it sounds like Stormburner. It symbolises us as band, as a force of nature. A storm and also the Fire from the pits of doom Burning eternally /Stormburner. And ss our lyrical themes are mainly about Vikings wreaking havoc upon their enemies; sailing fearless into the storm to go to unknown lands to pillage, loot, and “burn” the infidel towns.
2) Who Are Your Biggest musical Influencers?
-Mike: Manowar, Manowar,, and….. Manowar!!!! To be fair I do listen to lots of other bands as well but Manowar is and will always be my number one band. No other band even comes close to them. I do also listen to Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Hammerfall, Helloween, The Three Tremors.
3) How Did You Meet?
-Mike: After I quit my old band I was contacted by a lot of bands wanting me to sing for them, but I did not feel IT with any of them if you know what I am saying. I then decided that this time I want a band that is exactly the way I want it to be and with likeminded people. I put up an ad in a local Facebook group looking for members to form a “True Metal band”. Tommi then contacted me, we chatted for hours and it felt right. We then decided to meet over a few beers and discuss what and how we could accomplish this. This resulted in a short-term and a long-term plan with fixed goals that we wanted to accomplish, and I can tell you brother that we are just on track with everything.
4) How did you managed to start working with legendary Ken Kelly?
-Mike: Having Ken Kelly was in the plan that I mentioned in the precious question, but we were not sure that he would want to do it so I contacted him via Messenger where we talked back and forth.
I then sent him the Music Video for the song “Men at Arms” which we released as a stand alone music video/single in early 2018, he really enjoyed the song and said, “Mike, I want to do this”.
He then gave me his phone number so we had a long talk where we discussed what we wanted to achieve with the artwork and the rest is history. It was an honor working with the legend himself on this and he is a true professional and the greatest artist there is for this type of artwork.
5) What is your biggest inspiration?
-Mike: My two sons without any question, they inspire me in many ways to be the very best man that I can possibly be, so that I can guide them in the right way in their journey through childhood.
6) What’s Your Songwriting Process?
-Mike: My part is except being the vocalist is writing all the lyrics and the vocal melodies except on most choruses where we base the vocal melodies on Tommi’s ideas. Regarding the creation of the musical part I will let Tommi answer as he is the main song writer in the band. And all our songs on this album have spawned from him.
-Tommi: It usually starts with me getting a chorus melody stuck in my head. From there, I write an intro, verse and a bridge leading up to the aforementioned chorus. Quite the backwards process, but it works for me. Most of the time I get stuck after that and bring the idea to the rest of the band. We then arrange the song together and through that process either me or Mats get additional riff ideas, or parts, to add to the song until its finished. Mats and I collaborate extremely well and the results speak for themselves.
7) Who Do You Sound Like?
-Mike: This is very hard for me to answer, I think we sound like Stormburner but you will of course hear where are influences are from. If you read a lot of the reviews it actually varies a lot but one of the latest reviews described us as having a sound between Manowar, Helloween and Hammerfall.
We also do get a lot of people saying that we sound a bit like Judas Priest.
8. Describe your album with 3 words!
-Mike: Fight, Kill, Death, Burn (4 Words, but this is what I sing the song Into the Storm at one part)
9) With whom would you like to sing on one stage?
-Mike: Eric Adams for sure or maybe not because I would sound so small compared to him, haha. I did sing on stage with Ripper Owens, Sean Peck, and Steve Grimmet a month or two ago when they played Stockholm with The Three Tremors. They stayed at my house for a couple of days and then they invited me up at the gig to sing Painkiller.
10). Say some words to your Ukrainian fans!
-Mike: First I would like to offer a sincere thanks to you Volodomyr for taking the time and have this conversation with us. I also want to be clear that we plan to come to The Ukraine one day, I hear it is beatiful there with great food, beer, and metalheads. I will finsih with a quote from Ken Kelly that he said about our album. “Get this album and Burn the Storm!”