The first Cuban hard rock album called The Moondance Headlong was released last October in Finland! A soon-to-be Finnish management team met the band when they were on holiday in Cuba and states: “Sound Blast Profile has such a big heart for making music that it would have been a crime not to help the band. The band is new to the world, but not to Cuba.”

So plane tickets were bought and bags were packed, becoming the first time the band would meet outside Cuba. In April 2019, Iggy (Ignacio Moreno; guitar) and Rene (Castiñeiras; drums) arrived in Finland to start preparing for the album and at the beginning of June the rest of the band arrived. 

Billy (keyboards and guitar) says it was “an unforgettable experience, it was the first time at the age of 32, when I am away from Cuba and settled in a foreign land, which makes it a fun and crazy experience. 

Iggy adds: “The trip to Finland has been full of adventures, not the ones that are supposed to be with a person or a band that moves to a country with a different culture, beautiful scenery and well-known traditions. Our adventures have been more of a post-apocalyptic movie, but no surprise, we Cubans are pulling the legacy our government has left for us, which has tried so hard to make us unwanted elsewhere in the world.” 

In March 2019, the Red Moon Spell EP was released in Finland and is still available on CD and can be downloaded through Spotify, for example. Red Moon Spell was released partly from recordings made in Cuba. Iggy: “Well, the EP was something very different from the album; the EP songs were composed at home, where the process was familiar. The biggest challenge with the album was that it was mostly composed here, we even had enough songs to make the record, I had to go through an intense creative process and just focus on doing, but since we had plans to release the album and try to start touring, compose here to make the album recognizable, and I think it was something that got us out of our comfort zone and definitely opened our vision. ” 

Rene (drums): “In Cuba, people usually do drum programming on a computer because recording studios simply aren't available for most bands. I've never recorded in Cuba. For the first time I walked in a studio here in Finland. It was a great experience, a learning process and also fun. In fact, a different perspective. 

The full-length album, The Moondance Headlong, was recorded peacefully at Kujalandia Studio in Lahti and was produced as a self-published album without a record label. 

Billy: “The Moondance Headlong was recorded quickly and with great enthusiasm. It is my first music album, which I'm playing, a dream come true. The tracklist, melodies, lyrics, solos and its sound in general, is very expressive, which makes its effect even deeper. In fact, I think it's a very good album. " 

“This was definitely the biggest news that the band could get, for many years, breaking a big wall that we're not going to break, cultural prejudice, censorship; the lack of any kind of market restricts all kinds of artists in Cuba,” Iggy comments about launching Sound Blast Profile in Finland. “It doesn't help to be a hard rock band in a country that lives by selling the image of a perfect tropical paradise.” 

“Im really excited about it,” Rene closes. “I couldn't believe it happened. So many people talk, torment in recent years, so many false promises. And in the end, it really happened. 

Sound Blast Profile will be holding a special live stream broadcast on April 11th on their Facebook.

For more details visit Soundblastprofile.com.