Timo Rautiainen (b. January 25, 1963, in Sulkava, Finland) is a Finnish heavy metal singer, guitarist and songwriter. He is best known as the vocalist-guitarist of heavy metal band Timo Rautiainen & Trio Niskalaukaus. He has also played and sung in the bands Lyijykomppania and Aku Ankkuli and is also known as a teacher and a host of a culture-oriented talk show, K-Rappu.

After Timo Rautiainen & Trio Niskalaukaus announced in fall 2004 they would be going on a hiatus, Timo Rautiainen started to make plans for a solo album. After he had written some songs with his friend Jarkko Martikainen (from the finnish prog band, YUP), who had written and produced some songs for Trio Niskalaukaus, he gathered a band from his friends and top-of-the-line Finnish musicians.

This band included Tuomas Holopainen (keyboards) from Nightwish, Nils Ursin (bass) from Trio Niskalaukaus, Jussi Lampi (drums) - though this towering man is better known as an actor, ex-Children of Bodom Alexander Kuoppala and a session guitarist Peter Engberg (guitars). The main difference between Trio Niskalaukaus and Rautiainen's solo is that Niskalaukaus' sound is very slow and heavy, driven with downtuned guitars and is almost devoid of guitar solos whereas his solo project's soundscape is much lighter, sometimes even sounding positive, and features in many songs very unorthodox instruments in metal music - mandolin and bouzouki. Some long and complex guitar solos can be heard too.

Timo Rautiainen has released two full-length albums;
Critically acclaimed Sarvivuori (26. Apr 2006) and the brand new Loppuun Ajettu (23. May 2007). Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.