About Helliana
The story of Helliana begins with Rick Robbins in 2004. Rick began writing songs on the guitar when he was ten and decided to make a hobby/career out of it when he entered high school in 2004. At this time, Rick was living in Corvallis, Oregon. Rick had grown up listening to bands like Iron Maiden, Metallica, and AC/DC. He wrote his first metal song entitled "Wake the dead" in September of 2004. Later that month, Rick formed his first band "Metalhead" with members Daniel Easton, and Alex Solis. Unfortunately, the band went nowhere. Rick and Alex both became assistant musicians in the Corvallis recording studio for bands like "The Tigerelles" and "Road to Ruin".
In March of 2005, Rick met up with Alex Wilhelm, who was a bassist and metal vocalist. In the following month they brought in drummer Torrin Rosegold and guitarist Sam Lahr to form "Sarin". They immediatly began working on recording and rehearsing. Durng this time, Rick wrote the songs "Left to Die" and "Killing in the Night" which would later become "Thirst for Revenge". Sarin played the Art Festival and some of the after school parties that year. The summer of that year saw many rehearsals and plans for a demo release and a tour. They covered "Knocking on heaven's door", "Whiplash" and "Rock you like a Hurricane". In September of 2005, they began working on this demo that was to be entitled "Intoxication". Rick also wrote "High in the Sky", "Wreck of the Titan" and "Heat of Battle" in this time. Continuing problems with Torrin and rehearsals unfortunately led to the breakup of Sarin in January of 2006.
At this time, Rick decided to become a solo metal artist until the proper members came along. Rick was too serious for people in Oregon. In January, Rick wrote "Now youre in Hell" which would later become "Sleepy Hollow". In March, Rick met the girl who would inspire the song "Crystal", which was written that following month (originally entitled "My Crystal"). It was also at this time that Rick came up with the band name "Helliana", derived from the word "Hellion".
In June, Rick moved to Missoula, Montana and Crystal moved to New Mexico, taking the only copy of the lyric "Sleepy Hollow" with her. Within days of being in Montana, Rick began advertising to form a band. On his first day at Big Sky High School, Rick wrote a new lyric over the melody used for "Sleepy Hollow" that would become "Death to the Virgins". That same day, he wrote the first few verses for "The Convict".
In late September, Rick met Dustin Fugere. Dustin had been playing bass for about a year and a half. Dustin was friends with band members of "Zepher" and "Selective Sight" and was looking to join a band himself. On October 22, Rick and Dustn had a jam session with Shevin Halvorson of "A rose upon the ashes" (formerly "Zepher") and Erik Koonhen of "Selective Sight" and Helliana was born.
The first official line up of Helliana was Rick on lead and rhythm guitars, Dustin on bass, Shevin on lead and Rhythm guitars, and Ki Imus (also from "A rose upon the ashes") on drums and lead vocals. Ki and Shevin dropped out to focus on their band leaving Dustin and Rick to find replacements. In late November, they brought in drummer James Keller and began rehearsing. At this time, Rick wrote the songs "Black Venom" and "Leatherface". In December, Rick and Dustin met up with Scott Matthews who would help them record their first demo. This demo included the intrumentals of the songs "Left to die", "Black Venom", "Crystal", "Thirst for Revenge", "Heat of Battle" and "Apocalypse" which was a track consisting of Rick and Dustin's guitar and bass solos. In December of 2006, after hearing a very creepy story in his Creative Writing class, he wrote an instrumental song about it called "Blood of the Innocent", which would later become "Dreamcatcher".
In March of 2007, Rick and Dustin played and won the Big Sky High School talent show for a guitar/bass shredding duel. They played to a crowd of ver 1200 people that day. That same day, they met Brian Wemple, an aspiring guitar player and singer. Brian had watched Dustin and Rick play and was very impressed. After a couple of days of interviewing, Brian was hired to become the rhythm guitarist and vocalist for Helliana. Brian had a very deep voce that seemed to prove well for songs like "Crystal" and "Black Venom:. On April 20th, 2007, Helliana played their very first show on Missoula's MCAT TV station. Afterwards, they set up some club gigs.
Unfortunately, in early May, Brian Announced his departure from the band. Frantically, the band searched for a replacement lead singer to fill the bills that were scheduled in June. Three weeks of searching led them to a very talented choir singer named Dillon "Taiyun" Parr. Taiyun had quite an amazing voice, and after given a rock star 101 crash course, he became Helliana's dominant frontman. Dillon fit in perfectly with the band and they began thier official plans for the recording of the planned "Black Venom" demo.
On June 2nd, Taiyun had his first performance at Higgins Hall with Helliana supporting Fades to Grey, and Hello Newman (The Verity). As word of the metal spread, Helliana's popularity grew rapidly over the next few months. That July, the band recorded a seven song blueprint for the demo, including Black Venom, Death to the Virgins, Wreck of the Titan, Left to Die, Thirst for Revenge, Crystal, and Heat of Battle. Later that month though, Rick would request the vocal performance for "Crystal" as he felt it was right for him to sing it.
In early August, tragedy sturck the band yet again when family problems arose with Taiyun and he was forced to temporarily leave the band. Devastated and Frustrated, the band called for a temporary replacement to fill the rest of the summer shows. It didnt take long for them to find Billy Dinnel, a graduated choir singer with outstanding onstage antics. Billy was quickly sworn into the band and he performed with them at the Higgins Hall block party in late August.
The band had scheduled to shows in a row, August 31st and September 1st. On August 31st they were to support two touring bands and on September 1st they were to play with "The Four Horsemen" and "Slatem". On the day of the first show, Billy Dinnel had dissapeared from Missoula. Not knowing where he was, Bassist Dustin Fugere was thrown onto lead vocals on the spot. The band played a very good show that night, but the touring bands never showed, leaving Helliana all by themselves.
The next day, they were given the position as the final performance of the night. It was reviewed as one of the greatest shows ever put on at Higgins Hall. The band brought down the house with "Black Venom" and "Heat of Battle". It was obvious that Dustin's vocals were the missing ingredient. Painstakingly, they decided that Taiyun would not return to the band and Dustin would be sworn onto lead vocals forever. The band was glad that they had found thier final singer, but they still missed Taiyun. Although, opportunities would come up for Taiyun later, as forming metal bands in Missoula are beginning to look for him to continue his metal fronting.
Given the fact that Dustin had been in the band the entire time, they now saw the opportunity to release a full album instead of a demo. In September, the band began recording the "Black Venom" album. Rick also wrote the newest song "The Hessian" in September as he still wanted to write a metal song about the legend of Sleepy Hollow. The album was to contain twelve songs as Rick began taking a lot of his old Oregon songs off of the shelf. The album songs were decided as High in the Sky, Wreck of the Titan, Black Venom, Thirst for Revenge, Leatherface, Left to die, Crystal, Death to the Virgins, The Hessian, The Convict, Dreamcatcher, and Heat of Battle. They partnered up with Blake Bickel from Habbilus Records and created an album crew including Scott Matthews, Kirk Atkinson, Colter Tuxbury, Chelsea Blake, Nichole Tougas, and Tommy Evans. Rick also conveniently used this album as his senior project.
On December 21st of 2007, the long awaited release of the "Black Venom" demo was finally realized as a full album. The album would prove to be one of the best in all of Montana. They had thier release show the next day with "Slatem" and "The Basic Practicalities". Then, in that following March, James Keller left the band for different interests. Four days later, Sid Latray auditioned and was brought in on the spot The band continues to play all over Montana with Dustin as thier bassist and frontman, Rick the Shredder covering all the guitars, and Sid Latray pounding on the skins. Newer songs written by Rick include "Moonshine" and "Guardian Angel" and newer songs written by Sid and Dustin are expected to be out later in 2008. Rick is also being nostalgic and is thinking about modifying and bringing back the first metal song he ever wrote, "Wake the Dead", which has been shelved for four years.
The band would like to thank everyone who supported them, especially the ones who still did when everyone thought it was over.
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