Biography
2013-2015: genesis
The early beginnings dates back to 2013 while guitarist Marek (MZx) Żurkowski has been inspired by the bands like Rammstein or KoRn and wanted to start a rock-metal group on his own. The bands first song sketches were slowly made, back then the group based in Cracow (Poland) was simply named as StoneRing, but later changed onto SYNTHETIC BLAST.
In the next two years the group’s line-up slowly formed. It’s members joined in the following: Dominik ‘DOMINO’ Jurkowski – bass guitar, Dave Sychy – sample programming, Krystian ‘KRIZ’ Lachowski – drums and Tomek ‘TIMM’ Dębiak – rhythm guitar.
2016: Debuts!
Once the basic line-up had stabilized, the band began to regularly rehearse and focus on working on its material. The first demo recordings were made, and in the meantime searching for the vocalist were underway.
At the end of may, MZx came across a video with the song ‘Enter Sandman’ performed by one of the Cracow’s singers. The recording captivated Mark so much, that he decided to find the artist and invite him for a rehearsal. Less than a week later Jareg Nemo (back then as Idaeon) appeared in the rehearsal room with the ready song idea – “Raven’s Heart”.
The audition was promising, although, no binding decisions were made immediately, but after a numerous conversations and several test recordings, at the beginning of july the musicians started to cooperate.
At the turn of August and September at JerzyWolf Studios the recording sessions took place. The band’s first demo premiered on September 23rd 2016 with song “Raven’s Heart”!
The next important step was to debut live. On October 8th 2016 Synthetic Blast performed in front of the audience for the first time at the Przystanek Mistrzejowice music festival contest on the “i” stage in the MDK. A. Bursa (Cracow). The band performed its 3 original songs: ‘Raven’s Heart’, ‘Reach The Skies’ and ‘Alone I Burn’.
17 October- The band published another demo song entitled “Reach The Skies”.
3 December- The band performed at the Grodzka42 pub (Cracow) at the Debut Night organized by Volume Up among the groups SKAcowani, Indefinite… At the end of the concert the group distributed the audience their first demo “Raven’s Heart” on CDs.
2017: Our First successes
8 January- The band performed at Alchemia club (Cracow) during the eliminations on the 6th edition of Emergenza Festival. It was the first stage of the competition in which the audience decides the results. The host of the event Yanusin (Marcin Janusiński) while announcing the final verdict called the group “cherry on the cake”. The band made it to the next stage.
13 January- The group shares the stage with Torture of Hypocrisy. The Industrial Night concert took place at the VooDoo club (Warsaw).
The next day the group went to Stalowa Wola to play at the 25th final of the Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy charity.
1 February- The band published another demo song entitled “Alone I Burn”.
10 February- Dave Sychy left the band.
11 February- The group performed at the Ferie na Rockowo (Kalwaria Zebrzydowska).
17 March- The band performed at the semi-finals of the 6th Emergenza Festival in ZetPeTe Club (Cracow) and advanced straight to the finals!
8 April- The band performed at Rock Off Pawilon (Wroclaw) alongside the groups Autofire, The Hive, Lock And Load…
17 April- The band performed in Goldi Bar (Cieszanow) alongside the groups Scrathcpack, Bełkot Szewca, Dziki w tytoniu.
2 June- The semi-finals of Antyfest 2017 took place at CK Wiatrak in Zabrze, where Synthetic Blast together with the groups Dream Atlas and Vermis qualified for the finals. In result the band being invited to the popular radio station AntyRadio. On 7th June the quintet played live on the Makakofonia -Baby Have Fun broadcast hosted by Piotr Makak Szarłacki.
3 June- The band was interviewed by the Prokuratura website, the episode was published on June 15.
17 June- Synthetic Blast wins first prize on the local finals of the 6th Emergenza Festival Poland, thus opening the way to the nationwide finals. These took place on June 23rd at the Proxima club in Warsaw. The band took 3rd place!
In both of these concerts, Paweł Solon (ex-Wingless, Frantic Beth) replaced Kriz on drums.
22 June- The group was interviewed with Radio Nowinki.
Shortly the band had to take a break off about three months due to drummer Kriz’s departure into USA. At the time the band publishes live recordings from their last shows at the Emergenza Festival, then became the idea of releasing them in a form of a bootleg under the tittle Extravaganza.
21 October- The quintet performed once again at Przystanek Mistrzejowice on the “i” Stage in the MDK. A. Bursa (Cracow)
4 November- The band had a short performance at the 15th National Youth Music Festival Rockowania 2017, where the vocalist Jareg Nemo received a special prize for his vocals skills handed from Polish rock legend Marek Piekarczyk.
2 December- The band played at the 3rd Birthday of Volume Up at the Boss Garage Pub (Cracow).
29 December- The group performed at Christmas Rocking II at the Stare Kino (Oleszyce).
2018: Work in progress
24January- The band hired a nawe manager.
28 January- The band was interviewed on radio UJOT.FM
2 February- The band performed again at Alchemia (Cracow) supporting Inclusion.
24 February- The band started a recording session at the proffesional studio Media Studio in Warsaw for the planned single “Alone I Burn”.
13 April- The band went to Jelenia Góra for the Liga Rocka 2018 contest qualifiers, where they advanced to the competition finals.
18 May- The finals of the Liga Rocka 2018 took place on the Jelenia Góra meadows, where the star of the evening being the successfull and well known Polish band Coma. In the competition, the group faced the bands like Ciabatta, Chwilantropia, Mindfak and Nutshell. By the decision of the jury; Mieczysław Jurecki (chairman), Wojciech Hoffman (Turbo), Roman Rogowiecki (music journalist), Tomasz Rogula (head of the TR Studio Recording Studio) and Torsten Wiegel (musician) – Synthetic Blast has won the first place and took the main prize.
15 July- The band performed in Dobczyce at the KS Raba Stadium.
6 September- The Polish metal legend Roman Kostrzewski has selected 10 participants for the “Wszysko abo Nic” review, including Synthetic Blast. On September 14th, the band performed the song “No Tomorrow” in front of the Master at Panorama Club (Katowice).
8 December- The band performed at the VooDoo Club in Warsaw on the Wild Fest festival, sharing the stage with the groups like Wild Pig, The Sixpounder, Lessdress etc.
20/21 December- The recording session for the chant “Ghostship” took place at the Tomasz Rogula’s TR STUDIOS in Warsaw.
2019-2021: dark clouds
11/12 January- The band visits again the Media Studio in Warsaw, recording tracks for the song “No Tomorrow” on the planned single “Alone I…”.
24 January- The group fired its current manager.
9 March- The band performed in Zaścianek (Cracow) at the FestUza festival alongside with Hope, Gentuza, Line Of Dead…
21 March- The band decided to part ways with its vocalist J. Nemo.
Synthetic Blast is temporarily unactive until a new vocalist is found. Months of searching for a qualitant candidate has failed, so…
11 November- Jareg Nemo agreed on back to the group.
Thus, the band resumes its working on the long-planned 1st studio single “Alone I…” Vocal recording sessions take place at the turn of November and December in the MZx Studio founded by Marek.
2020-2021: The PLAGUE…
18 January- The vocalist J.Nemo wrote a screenplay and became the director & started working on the production of a bands new videoclip for the upcoming song “Alone I Burn”.
11 February- The band received a test mix of the 2 songs for the long-planned single titled “Alone I…” however, the result turned out to be extremaly bad, so the group decided to record everything over again, this time entirely in Mark’s MZx Studio. Then the unanimous decision was made to record the entire long-playing debut album (back then under the working title “The Pieces of a Broken Glass”) instead of a short briefly 2 song single. Preparations for recording session last at the turn of February to March.
The recording session for the Synthetic Blast’s debut album started on March 12th at MZx Studio. The process began with recording drum tracks, which lasted until March 19th.
Due to the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus epidemic in the whole country and various restrictions introduced by state authorities, including: prohibiting gatherings, mass events, etc. the band is forced to abandon their upcoming stage plans, as well as temporarily suspend the recording session of the album, and also cancel a well planned shooting the “Alone I Burn” videoclip for an indefinite period of time.
20 July- The previously planned title of the debut album was reformed and the entire project finally gained a brand new name as “Modern Love & Old-Fashioned Death”.
As the coronavirus pandemic related restrictions ease, the group resumes working on their projects with recording guitar tracks. Unfortunately, with the arrival of autumn, there was another wave of COVID-19 cases, which resulted again on cancellation of the planned shooting the music video for “Alone I Burn”. A whole year seems to have been wasted, but the recordings of the instrumental parts are mostly completed and the project moves into its next phase.
On next year a vocal recording sessions will last from January to April.
Due to technical reasons, another attempts on creating a music video for “Alone I Burn” ended up in failure & the whole project came to an ultimate standstill. However, at the end of November J.Nemo came with the new idea with working on another music video, this time for “No Tomorrow” song. Shooting started on December 18th and Mark’s brother, Bartosz Żurkowski was behind the camera.
2022: modern love & old-fashioned death
30 January- The band finally returned on the stage giving show at the 30th Final of the Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy charity in MOKiS (Myslenice).
14 May- The group took part in the PKRock’22 contest in Legnica and won the first place! The event took place in the Courtyard of the Knights’ Academy the evening headliner was the rock band Cochise. Piotrek Przewoźniak temporarily replaced Kriz on drums.
2 July- The band performed at the Garage Pub (Cracow) with the fellow groups Incydent & Mind Enslaver.
6 August- The quintet took part in the KozyNostra Rock Fest’22 contest. The event took place in manor park in Kozy where they faced the groups like Ghost Mind, Hrust and Defusion. By the decision of the jury: Jacek Kaliński – Mayor of the Kozy Commune, Marek Małecki – Director of the Cultural Center in Kozy and Dominik Wawak (Studio DMB – sponsor of the main prize) Synthetic Blast wins the 1st place. Łukasz Kurnik (Searing Lightning) replaced Timm.
11 August- The band published a “No Tomorrow” video clip. Edited by Tentacles Studio.
2 September- The guitarist Timm decided to leave the band.
23 September- Omen Records Music releases the long-awaited Maxi-single “Alone I…” The Limited Edition CD’s (only 100 hand-numbered crafts!) contains in total of 5 songs as a foretaste of the upcoming longplay.
8 October- the band supported Zenek Kupatasa in Tarnow at the Stowarzyszenie Przepraszam club.
14 October- the band supported the group Batna in Garage Pub (Cracow)
15 October- the band supported the group Transgresja at Komin club in Sosnowiec on Zlot Watahy Transgresji party.
31 October- Omen Records Music released Synthetic Blast’s debut longplay entitled “Modern Love & Old-Fashioned Death”. The album contains 11 original compositions (+1 hidden track), each of them has a unique character perfected to every small detail. The music and content create a coherent but also dark story presented in two contrasting acts; the first one about love, the second about death. The album was recorded at MZx Studio, mixed and masterred by Marek Żurkowski. All graphic design was made by Jareg Nemo.
11 November- The band played in Spółdzielczy Pub (Rzeszów) together with the Batna group.
26 November- The group performed at the Zaścianek club (Cracow) alongside with the band Transgresja.
2023-2024: Meanders
5 January- the band appeared again on the Antyradio performing live on the Makakofonia MakakArt – Baby Have Fun! broadcast.
25 February- The band played at HEAVY METAL FUcK’n CONCERT together with groups Acheront and Mayhayron.
The band began searching for a new rhythm guitarist.
At start of March, Synthetic Blast began working on an EP entitled “Meandry” (Meandres). The release will contain some previously unpublished songs entirely in Polish!
13 January- The band played at the Oliwa Pub (Cracow) alongside Mercurius.
9 February- The band performed at a charity concert supporting the Fundacja Cząstka Ciebie foundation together with the groups It Follows and Wirefall.