Roope Latvala
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Roope Latvala (born June 25, 1970) is a Finnish guitarist who currently plays with the bands Children of Bodom and Sinergy. He was the founding member of Stone, one of the most notable bands in the history of Finnish heavy metal.
[edit] Biography
Roope was born in the Finnish city of Helsinki. At the age of 15, he founded the band Stone together with Janne Joutsenniemi. The band's style was initially focused a more traditional heavy metal, but they soon shifted to a faster and more aggressive sound, which was the key for them to receive mass recognition. In the year of 1991, the band was dissolved, with a discography of four studio albums, one live album and one compilation album. He is the main influence of many Finnish guitarists, especially Alexi Laiho (from Children of Bodom).
After the break up of Stone, he released an instrumental work with his brother, entitled Latvala bros. He then played with Dementia for around a year. In 1995 he joined Waltari after guitarist Sami Yli-Sirniö left the band. They played together for 6 years before Roope decided to quit the band.
He joined Sinergy after vocalist Kimberly Goss moved from Sweden to Finland and had to reassemble the band; he assumed the role that previously belonged to Jesper Strömblad (from In Flames).
During the whole of his career, Roope had many side projects and played as a guest musician in many bands, the most notable of the being: Warmen, Nomicon, Pornonorsu, Jailbreakers, Gloomy Grim and Soulgrind. At times he also composed movie soundtracks.
When Alexander Kuoppala left Children of Bodom in the year of 2003 in the middle of their world tour, the members of the band were forced to search for a new guitarist in the time span of one month, when their next show would happen. The new guitarist needed to be able to learn about twenty songs to be played live. Alexi Laiho tried to recruit Kai Nergaard (from Griffin), but was unsuccessful. With little time left, he contacted Roope, the only guitarist he deemed skilled enough to manage the feat of learning the songs with enough accuracy to replace Alexander, who had been playing with the band for 10 years.
Roope played the Moscow concert on the 16th of August successfully. Despite the initial announcement that he would be a session player only, he remained with the band and recorded the Trashed, Lost & Strungout EP. He continued playing with the band and also recorded the hit LP "Are You Dead Yet?". All signs indicate that he is now a permanent member of Children of Bodom. Roope played two guitar solos on the latest Children of Bodom album, "Are You Dead Yet?", despite the widely accepted notion that Alexi plays all solos on Bodom albums.
When he joined Children of Bodom, Roope made a deal with ESP Guitars, which already endorsed Alexi and Henkka Seppälä. Before that he used Jackson Guitars almost exclusively (Roope could be seen wearing the infamous Jackson T-shirt that reads Get The Best, Fuck The Rest), and it is not unusual for him to use his old Jacksons live.
Nowadays he is really into Melodic Death Metal. There were rumours which said that he would switch sides with Jesper Strömblad of the Melodic Death Metal Band In Flames, but he denied it saying that he had never heard anything about it, and added "I said that I like Dark Tranquillity and In Flames. But somebody misunderstood me and wrote silly things in a metal magazine. So we are together with my lovely friend Alexi Laiho and the whole crew."
[edit] Technical
On the Latvala Bros. MySpace page, it states that Roope uses "metal plektra." He probably uses the Jim Dunlop brass TeckPick. Roope plays his ESP custom Random Star on stage and in the studio, yet he still, on some occasions, uses his old Jackson RR's.
[edit] External links
- Unofficial Roope Latvala Tribute Site - Contains brief biography, in-depth information on Roope's guitars and amplifiers, several photo galleries, discography, and a fan guestbook.
