PRETTY MAIDS Trivia — 21 Entries
21 sourced facts about PRETTY MAIDS.
Trivia
In the autumn of 2025 two of their songs went into the second season of Peacemaker on HBO Max: "Please Don't Leave Me," their 1992 hit, in episode four, and "Little Drops of Heaven," from 2010, in episode six. Their own site announced it as good news.
PRETTY MAIDS were formed in Denmark in early 1982 by Ronnie Atkins and Ken Hammer, and the two of them have been the axis of the band ever since.
How this band started in Japan is a little unusual. Their first album, Red, Hot and Heavy, released in 1984, became a substantial hit there as an import — and the response was large enough that a domestic Japanese edition followed afterwards. Gekirock calls them one of the rare bands whose popularity caught fire in Japan first.
What followed settled into a pattern. As Blabbermouth puts it, they went on releasing albums, usually followed by European and Japanese tours. Japan was not an occasional market for them but part of the circuit each record went around.
After Undress Your Madness came out in November 2019 the band stopped. By Ronnie Atkins's own account it ended the wrong way: he became ill and for around six months could do nothing, and the new album came out in exactly that stretch, so there was never a chance to tour it. Then the lockdown arrived.
That was not the only reason for the silence. In September 2023 Atkins said there had been issues inside the band since 2019, particularly between himself and Ken Hammer. By then, though, the two were talking again and had met not long before. With forty years of business still to settle, sometimes by email, his expectation was that they would end up burying the hatchet — if for nothing else, then for the fans. It had always been a love-hate relationship, as he put it.
What Atkins gave as the reason for coming back was closure. Speaking in December 2023 he said he knew there were a lot of fans who wanted to see the band again, at least to have some kind of closure. What was planned was modest — five or six festivals over the summer, perhaps. How much beyond that he did not know; they might continue; it depended in part, he said, on his health.
The first step back was taken under another name. On 16 June 2024 they played Forbrændingen in Albertslund, Denmark, billed as KINGMAKERS — a "secret" show taking its name from their 2016 album, and a warm-up for the real return four days later. It was their first concert in nearly five years.
On 25 October 2026 they play FULL METAL JAPAN 2026 at Pia Arena MM in Kanagawa. By Gekirock's account their last Japanese visit was in November 2018, making this about eight years on. POWERWOLF, ANGRA and HIBRIA are on the same day.
Their Japanese shows in November 2018 ran two nights, and on both of them they played Future World, the 1987 album, complete. What differed was the second half: on 17 November it was greatest hits and the band's own favourites, on the 18th rare songs and the fans' favourites. The album's sleeve hung large behind the stage, and at six o'clock exactly the record's intro began.
The silence has clear edges. By BARKS's account the band had been inactive since the autumn of 2019, with no live performance since September that year. The return was announced in October 2023: three Nordic festivals the following summer — Copenhell in Denmark in June, Time To Rock in Sweden in July, and Jailbreak in Denmark in August.
Ronnie Atkins has described in his own words how he decided to spend the years after he fell ill. As reported by BARKS, he said two roads had opened in front of him: crouch in a corner and pity himself — which, he allowed, he did for a while — or live and keep doing what he is good at. He took the second. With support from his family and his real friends, he decided to go on writing. For several years after that he concentrated on solo work.
The members page on the band's site lists five people, each with a date of birth: Ronnie Atkins on vocals, born 16 November 1964; Ken Hammer on guitar, 26 October 1963; Allan Tschicaja on drums, 5 July 1974; Rene Shades on bass, 27 July 1971; and Chris Laney on keyboards and guitar, 31 January 1972.
2026 is not only Japan. The tour list on their site runs from Barcelona Rock Fest on 3 July, Ballingen in Germany on the 4th and Opava in the Czech Republic on the 25th, to Japan on 25 October, and then in December to Gothenburg in Sweden and home to Aarhus and Copenhagen.
Their most recent album remains Undress Your Madness, released in November 2019 through Frontiers Music Srl — which is also how their own site still presents it, on CD, LP and digital.
Undress Your Madness, from 2019, was produced by Jacob Hansen, known for his work with Volbeat. Frontiers Music's own copy describes the result as a sound that reinvigorates the band while taking in the soundscapes of its past — modern and classic at once, as they put it — and calls Atkins and Hammer one of the best songwriting teams in the genre.
The discography on their own site holds more than the studio albums. It Comes Alive – Made in Switzerland, from 2012, is a live record made at Z-7 in Switzerland, and A Blast From The Past followed in February 2019. Their recent releases have all come through Frontiers Records.
The second album, Future World, from 1987, is still taken as their landmark. Blabbermouth describes it as a record regarded as a classic to this day.
The return under their own name came on 20 June 2024, at the Copenhell festival in Copenhagen.
In that first year back they also played Time To Rock in Knislinge, Sweden, and Jailbreak in Horsens, Denmark. The following year, 2025, they were aboard the annual Monsters of Rock Cruise.
By April 2025 a new record was at least in motion. When they decided to start playing live again, Atkins says, a new album had not been part of the conversation; since then they had begun talking about recording something. Nothing was written yet, but writing and recording were being discussed. His own priority was a solo album first: twelve songs already written and needing only lyrics before he could record.