Euro metal pioneers Oz were originally formed in Nakilla, a small town in Finland, in 1977. The band consisted of Mark Ruffneck (aka Pekka Mark) on drums, lead vocalist Ape de Martini (aka Eero Hämäläinen), bassist Tauno Vajavaara and Kario ELO on guitar. It took the four Fins five years to come up with the material for their legendary debut album Heavy Metal Heroes - Hey You. With the success of the album not only in Finland (but all over continental Europe), Oz decided to permanently move to Stockholm, a much larger city than their original hometown, in order to follow a professional recording career. The follow-up album, Fire In The Brain, was released in 1983. With high-energy heavy metal anthems such as "Fortune," "Megalomaniac," and "Gambler," it was an even more striking effort than the band's debut record. In his Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal, Canadian metal journalist Martin Popoff awarded the album 9 out of 10 points and remarked: "Fire In The Brain is a dark, depressing freight train of a record, a richly European work, which pounds relentlessly from the opening heaves of the brilliantly apocalyptic 'Search Lights,' through the slow death trudge of 'Black Candles', to the violent concluding wails of the title track."
