Onward

Onward formed in the summer 1990 at the same time Gain was around. Gain was Peter Amdam's other band he was in, they did a mini norwegian tour with So Much Hate at one point. Onward started as a three piece band in the beginning with Ollie, Torgny and Peter. All of them had the desire to start a hardcore band with a straight edge message. Ollie came down every weekend from the small town Lillehammer, where he was living at the point. All of them practise until their ears were bleeding and then go out for pizza every friday and saturday. After the demo was recorded they sent it to Peter from Crucial Response Records. He was enthusiastic to put out a 7". After the same titled 7" and a few songs for the Share Common Ground were recorded Torgny was away to Nevada as an exchange student in late 1991. Onward was not functioning as a band but Peter, Ollie and later Arne who was joining Onward on bass were jaming and writing new songs. The same titled 7" was coming out in 1991 and the songs for the Share Common Ground LP compilation came out in 1992. When Torgny returned from the States in summer of 1992, the band was back together, practiced for one week, then toured with Blindfold from Belgium two weeks in Europe. After the tour the band was basically done as Ollie who became a full fledged Hare Krishna devotee did not want to play shows anymore. But Onward still wanted to record the new songs. At the Onward rehearsal space they invited all their friends for one more show. In October Onward 1993 Onward practiced a few times to open for Shelter that was supposed to be the last Onward show. Torgny and Arne has already started Amulet and Ollie focused solely on his krishna conscious life. Basically the early years of Onward is a really meager story but the band did a lot of things in a short period.

All of a sudden Peter had no band in late October 1993, to quote Peter: "Everyone was doing Lifetime style bands and nothing was exciting to me anymore." Peter got really frustrated, he stated with his twisted humor: "I guess that's when I started my hardcore bitterness." Arne also started Contention, kinda metalic but they were really good. When Trond, Peter's old school friend from Molde, moved to Olso things would go better. In Summer 1995 Arne and Peter pulled their heads together and figured out they should pick up were Onward had left off. They asked Trond to join the band and asked Truls to play drums. Truls used to play drums in that old straight edge band Washington Disease and was in Amulet at the time. Onward has never supported the "In A Different Place" album which came out in 1994, so they had to do something about this. Onward came back from the dead and the first show was with 108 in Oslo. In October 1995 Onward toured again through Europe, the infamous "Survive Death Tour" along with Mainstrike from Holland. If people were sceptical about Onward's return before the tour, it definitely turned around. In September 1996 Onward hit the studio to record for a 7" and a couple of extra tracks. As it happens the band wasn't satisfied with the sound of the test pressings and put out a 12" with the extra songs instead. The infamous "These Words Still Pray" 12" came out in the summer of 1997. Two songs from this session appeared on the classic For The Sake Of Dedication LP compilation. The band played some remarkable shows in Porsgrunn or with Civ at the Blitz in Oslo to name a few. Onward played shows till late fall of 1998 but as it happens Sportswear got more into focus and Trond was out on vacation for a long time. Onward never really broke up, they simple faded away.

Related bands:
Enforcer, Insurance Risk, Shipwrecked, Sportswear, SYF