Silent Witness (4)

Hard rock band from Stange, Norway. In 1987 Eskil, Henning, Vidar and Øystein started "thistory" when they formed the band Witness as a follow-up of New Øysteins. The current (and final) line-up of Silent Witness was finalized in 1988. The search for a lead singer had been going on for some time when the band was tipped off of a singer who could fit in the shoes to replace Henning as the lead singer. Roger joined Witness in March 1988 with background from i.e. Hurricane and Titleless in Trondheim. The rumor of being a quite OK live act visually as well as musically spread around and in 1988 Witness was rewarded as the best live act in the local "Norwegian Championship of Rock". The prize was recording of two songs in Toccata studio in Hamar, which became the demo of the songs on the single "No Easy Way Out". Being influenced by some of the great bands as Van Halen, Whitesnake, Extreme, Mr. Big and Bon Jovi, Witness wrote a lot of songs in the same category. The band did a lot of concerts all over Norway in this period and was also invited to join in on some of the biggest tours in the country at that time as support act for mainly Return (3) and Diesel Dahl's Tindrum. They also did some support-acts for Sons Of Angels, Sha-Boom, Stage Dolls and DumDum Boys. In 1988 Witness changed the name to Silent Witness, a small and undramatic change but somewhat necessaryjust to avoid any kind of misunderstanding or even conflicts when recording the single. At the end of 1989 Silent Witness recorded the single "No Easy Way Out". The 1000 copies that was produced and released in 1990 were sold out and/or given away as promotion material, and resulted in in a lot of nice feedback. Also an invitation to do a gig for a TV show broadcasted twice on TVNorge. The most selling artist that year sold somewhere between 6-7000 copies of the single which then became an "all time high record" in Norway, so selling almost 1000 copies was quite OK for a local amateur band "those days". The final concert Silent Witness did was in Hamar a May night in 1991. The band decided in 2008 to collect the different materials the had produced over the years on a CD, and today (2008) it's 20 years since today's line-up stated the rehersals in the Håkonsen basement in Stange. Silent Witness decided at the same time to re-record some old songs to get "sound of today" on the 4 of the "new-old songs" for the CD "Thistory". They have also occasionally gathered up for some fun and exciting acts inbetween, for instance they were invited to join Return (3)'s final show in Stangehallen for approximately 3000 screaming fans in 2000, and they also did a surprise stunt on Roger's bachelor party in 2002, to record "Pictures Of You" and "Don't Let Me Go" in Henning's Space Valley Studio. The band have a done some gigs locally now and then after the release of the "Thistory" CD.