Markus Staiger

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Markus Staiger is the founder of the Nuclear Blast record company, which is rooted in Germany, the United States, and Brazil.

[edit] Biography

Nuclear Blast was formed in 1987 after founder Markus Staiger travelled throughout the United States for four weeks and saw a gig of his favorite band BLAST. The label was originally titled simply "Blast", but this was soon changed to Nuclear Blast. The label's first release was a vinyl compilation called Senseless Death (NB 001) featuring US Hardcore bands like Attitude, Sacred Denial, Impulse Manslaughter and others. The first edition of 1,000 copies was sold out after one year.

Nuclear Blast started signing grindcore acts after Staiger discovered Las Vegas' Righteous Pigs. This followed with releases by Atrocity, Master and Incubus, which all sold over 30,000 copies. The grindcore explosion is considered a landmark in the label's history, gaining it worldwide attention.

In the early nineties, black metal became highly popular in the European underground, and Nuclear Blast signed many bands. Many of them, such as Dimmu Borgir and Dissection, are still signed to Nuclear Blast. The black metal trend became increasingly popular, and by 1996, several Nuclear Blast-signed artists were entering European charts. By the end of 1997, Nuclear Blast had 20 employees and mailed out a 100 page catalogue quarterly to 50 countries.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, they expanded into a direction of power metal, promoting bands such as HammerFall and the power metal innovators Helloween. During the 2000s, Nuclear Blast started promoting some Finnish bands, such as Stratovarius and Sonata Arctica, and the German band Blind Guardian, expanding their style further into different subgenres of metal.

The label was featured in the 2006 German movie "Heavy Metal auf dem Lande".

The Christian underground metal movement benefited remarkably from Nuclear Blast Records's active distribution and sudden interest in Christian metal. Torodd Fuglesteg of Norway's Arctic Serenades Records claimed that "The owner of Nuclear Blast was a committed Christian and he was pushing everything with that religious agenda through Nuclear Blast. Mortification and Horde were pushed like mad by Nuclear Blast when other labels were pushing pure satanic stuff." ^[1]