Lasse Finbråten

Lasse Finbråten — Norwegian keyboardist — has been Circus Maximus's keyboard player since 2005, which puts him on three of the band's four records. He joined just after the debut album, The 1st Chapter (2005), and his arrival coincides with the phase in which Circus Maximus definitively settled its identity. Isolate (2007), the next record, is the best-remembered of the discography: progressive metal with wide choruses, keyboard layers working as orchestration rather than ornament, and a rare balance between complexity and song. The keyboard's role in this design is twofold. In instrumental passages it shares the solo space with Mats Haugen's guitar, in the manner of classic progressive metal; in the sung parts it holds the atmosphere and widens the harmonic space without competing with Michael Eriksen's voice. He is also on Nine (2012) and Havoc (2016). In a band whose core has barely changed in twenty-five years, Finbråten is the one member who replaced somebody — and stayed long enough to become as permanent as the founders.