Photos
Kerem Inci
Affliction
“From the first note I've played on "Torero" I thought there could be no better guitar to play heavy music on. On stage it feels aggressive and energetic, and looks absolutely beautiful. We are proud to be a part of the PRS family!”
Affliction, consisting of Emrah Demirel, Emre Demirel, Kerem Inci and Fikri Yargici came to being in February 1999. The band originally started off in 1998 with the friendship of Emrah and Fikri and the fact that they both started playing musical instruments in the first year of university. Since he was listening to it from a young age, music was already more than a hobby for Emrah, but the desire to play an instrument was only fulfilled once he was at university. A few months later Emrah met Kerem there. The base of the band was founded when Emrah's proposal to start playing together for fun at the campus studio was accepted by Fikri and Kerem. Within a few months, the group decided to take things to a further level and began the search for a bass player. The first proposal was given to and accepted by Emre who just a few months before had begun playing bass. This being done the lineup was completed. In a short while, Affliction progressed considerably and on May 23 1999 found themselves giving their first concert to their listeners in Izmir at Ege University . After that the group began to compose songs rapidly. With this began the preparations for a demo and the group went into a silent period lasting about a year. This was broken when on May 18 2000 they again gave a concert at Ege University and succeeded in not only attracting the interest of their fans in Izmir but in getting full marks from them as well. Right after that, without putting out the demo on the market, Affliction signed up with Poem Productions and began the preparations for their first album. On the 23rd of April 2001 they gave their - what was now becoming customary - concert at Ege University for 500 listeners.
While working on their album, they took part in Katatonia's concert as an opening band on the 9th of June 2001 and got very good reviews throughout the country for their high performance. As a result of these ratings, 4 months after, they participated as opening band again for the concert given by The famous Swedish Melodic Death Metal group, Dark Tranquility and after that the positive responses only continued to increase.
After these concerts the recording sessions for Affliction's debut album begun in April 2002 though due to certain unforeseen events album was released in May 2003. This long awaited album got very good reviews from national metal-music-magazines and webzines. After the album was released, Affliction played on some local concerts and took stage at major festivals such as Rock The Nations II (UDO, Destruction, Pain of Salvation and many...) , Rock Republic (Slayer, In Flames, Over Kill...)
Following the concerts and festivals season, Affliction started to work on new material at the end of 2005. After a long time work in progress, the songs were completed in January 2007 and they started recording in March 2007 which produced their 2 nd album: Execution is Necessary. Progression both technically and musically, also at sound quality was obvious. Album got very good response at national wide and also from out of Turkey. After the album was released they took place at some major fests like Summer Rocks Fest (Moonspell, UDO) and Uni-Rock Fest (Testament, Opeth and Dark Tranquillity). Affliction made their first video for the song “Raven” with Swedish director Daniel Larsson (Soilwork, Zonaria, The Haunted).
Affliction’s main goal since day one is to be signed with a good label outside of Turkey due to cant talk about a metal music industry in Turkey and to be able to play around the world. A few months later of releasing their second album, they had an offer from a label in USA. The label kept none of their promises and Affliction decided to terminate the deal with the label.
Affliction signed with Insano Booking & Management for world wide booking and management October 2008. They made their second video for the song “WWW” with Daniel Larsson again from “Execution is Necessary” album. “WWW” is the first metal video from Turkey shot with an XDCAM HD and also the first Turk music video to be distributed on the web in HD.
Affliction won a world wide music competition in 2009 which arranged for MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) North America by indiesolo.com. 160 bands attended competition and competation went on almost one year. Affliction got crowned as indieSolo's 2009 MMA Music Champion and the Ultimate Ground & Pound Band of the World by the listeners’ voting for their song “Raven”.
The band made another “first” for Turkey in October 2009. They played the biggest and longest tour on abroad which any Turkish band made so far in any genre.