Biography
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Years Active
2004 – present (20 years)
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Founded In
Oulu, Pohjois-Pohjanmaa, Finland
Antipope is a metal band from Oulu, Finland. Antipope was formed in 2004. Throughout their existance, Antipope has incorporated influences from various styles of metal into their music while maintaining the connection with melodic heavy metal. Their progressive approach has gained them notoriety for avoiding being pigeonholed and at the same time disregarding the trends of contemporary metal.
Antipope's roots can be traced to a black metal band named by "Tuska" ('pain/agony' in finnish). Kajaani based Tuska existed between the years 1998-2001. After a couple of years of break from "extreme metal" Santtu Heinilehto, MJ Myllykangas (guitars/vocals) and Jyri Palmu (drums), all former members of Tuska, started a black metal studio project, named by "Antipope".
Antipope existed as a trio for little over a year until in the autumn of 2005 J Rikberg took the responsibility of lead guitarist. Need for another guitarist had risen once the band began to consider taking steps to perform live - after positive feedback from those who had heard their home-made recordings - although the band originally did consider themselves as only a studio group.
By the end of the year 2006 Antipope compiled the material they had written so far on a CD-R release "Apostate Angel" which has been distributed to the friends and fans.
After a couple of gigs in 2007 and 2008 another guitarist was recruited and Antti Karjalainen begame a member of Antipope. In the summer of 2008 Antipope's line-up when Jyri Palmu, the original drummer of Antipope, died unexpectedly.
After couple of months of searches and auditioning Tuska E. was recruited as the new drummer of Antipope.
In the autumn of 2008 band released their first official demo "Chaosmos". A year later a follow-up EP Excessive Use of Faith was completed. During the year 2009 the band wrote songs for their first full-length album. The album entitled "Desert" was completed in early 2010 and was released by the autumn of the same year. The second full length "House of Harlot" was published by Violent Journey Records on 30th of November 2011. House of Harlot gained quite a lot more attention and positive feedback from international metal media.
In August 2012 founding member and long time bassist Santtu Heinilehto left Antipope. The band decided not to recruit a new mumber, but instead vocalist Mikko took up the bass.
Antipope began to write material for their 3rd full-length album in early 2012. The new album 3 Eyes of Time was released in May 2013. After releasing the 3rd album Antipope announced that they would go into a non-active state.
After three years of hiatus, Antipope announced in the autumn of 2016 that the work on the 4th full length album had been resumed. In December 2016 Antipope released a music video of "White Summer Night", a song taken from 3 Eyes of Time.
Since then, Antipope has released four more albums. Denial/Surivival (2017), Apostle of Infinite Joy (2020), Rex Mundi (2022), and Doors of the Dead (2024),
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