The band was started by Martin Steene back in his school days, some five years ago. Since then the band has had continuesly different lineups, and they have played three different genres of metal.

They started out as a heavy metal/hard rock-cover band but after a while they started playing doom metal. Then it got more aggressive and they started playing a mix of melodic death- and black metal, but Martin's heart was keen on getting back to his roots and playing good old fashioned German power/speed metal. Therefore Martin and Krisitan H.M. teamed up with two good friends, Steve Mason and Thomas Mogensen, and started playing covers of Manowar, Rage and Hammerfall.

Not felling satisfied with just playing covers, Martin started writing material for the project band. Sadly enough the project never really got off the ground. Although Martin had made up his mind about playing power metal, and suggested this genre to his main band, Decades of Darkness.

Along with their musical changes, they have also changed the name of the band several times. Starting out as "Misery", they soon changed it to "Decades of Darkness", and finally ended up as "Iron Fire".

In the summer of 1998 they decided upon making a demo CD, which was the beginning of a new era for Iron Fire. The demo was received immensely well in Scandinavia and Europe, and they were offered contracts from "LMB", "Lound'n'Pround" and "Noise records", eventually signing with Noise records.

Martin Steene sings and used to share the leads with Kristian H. Martinsen on guitar, but had to give it up due to trouble with his wrists. Now Kristian plays the leads alone. Kristian "Iver" Iversen, who originally founded the band with Martin, had left it for a couple of years, but rejoined the band and plays the rhythm-guitar. Gunnar Olsen plays drums, and Jakob Lykkebo plays bass.

They have been influenced by many bands, in particular Helloween and Manowar to which you can draw many parallels. Since they began playing power/speed metal at the end of 1997, they have worked hard to develop themselves musically, in particular Martin has spent a lot of time and energy on composing catchy and melodic songs which are, in his opinion, the very spirit of true metal.

However, it hasn't always been easy to keep the spirit alive, due to the very small club scene that thrives in Denmark, it has been a struggle getting live jobs. Now, however, things seem to be looking up as they have finished recording their first album, with Tommy Hansen as producer( also produced Helloween, Pretty Maids).

Sadly enough, after recording the record, "Thunderstorm", things didn't go as planned with their rhythm guitarist, Kristian "Iver" Iversen. So the band and "Iver" parted as friends.

In January 2006 the band signed a new contract with the Austrian label Napalm Records.

(Source: www.tartareandesire.com/bands/Iron_Fire/861)