Truls Haugen

Truls Haugen — Norwegian drummer — is a co-founder of Circus Maximus and, with his brother Mats on guitar, forms the band's writing core. Drums in progressive metal are usually displayed as technical demonstration. In Circus Maximus they work otherwise: the band's repertoire has irregular metres and frequent tempo changes, but what you hear is the song, not the feat. Haugen plays those complex structures while keeping the groove intact — which is the difference between progressive music you listen to for pleasure and progressive music you admire from a distance. He is on all four of the group's records: The 1st Chapter (2005), Isolate (2007), Nine (2012) and Havoc (2016). He also has writing credits and contributes backing vocals, which is common among drummers who write. Over more than twenty years Circus Maximus has built a space of its own in Scandinavian progressive metal — less virtuosic than Dream Theater, more melodic than Opeth — and the stability of the core formed by the Haugen brothers with vocalist Michael Eriksen is the main reason for it.