Interviews

You can say that Finland has been hot in the music scene for a while now, throwing more artists at us than we can keep track of. Some are mainstays like Sonata Arctica, Nightwish, Children Of Bodom and who can forget H.I.M. Sinamore has been around for about ten years and they have just released their first official disc called “A New Day.” They bring to the table of mix of moody/pop/goth metal that will surely capture the Hot Topic crowd and those who are into the emotional stuff. The last member to join the band, Tommi Tapani Muhli has a lot to say about this album and if you are a fan of To/Die/For and the aforementioned H.I.M. then it would be a wise decision to add this to your personal collection.

In the bio, the band is described as Katatonia meets HIM. What I got out of it was To/Die/For meets HIM especially when it comes to Mikko’s singing. It's deep like Jape's going for that Simon Le Bon (Duran Duran) sound.
Ummm…Of course there’s always a shit-load of different influences involved when we’re talking about a four piece gathering. And in addition, every listener makes their own conclusions as well. So, if you hear a little To/Die/For here and there it’s fine with me…I don’t mind. I guess the description is about the overall feeling and atmosphere of the album. It’s catchy, melancholic, but yet dark and rough in a way.

Before Sinamore, there was another name for the band which was Halflife. Five demos were recorded in total. Now that version of the band began back in 1998 and you joined in 2002. Was any of that material anything like what has been released now? 

In fact, the musical path we’re following hasn’t changed that much during the years. The ones that have been changing is us; as players and musicians. There’s few very old songs on the debut album such as “Crimson Leaf” (demoed in 2001) and “Sleeping Away” (demoed in 2003). And as you can hear they don’t differ that much from the other material on the album. Of course we’ve made new arrangements to them etc., but the main idea and mood is the same.

Like most bands, you all suffered set backs as well. Sinamore was signed to a Japanese label, but you had to separate the partnership. Can you tell us more about that?

We signed the deal after we got our fifth demo together. We recorded an album for the label but decided to split our seperate ways quite soon because of various reasons. The main reason was that we didn’t get our money from them…and the communication between them and us was very difficult. So we dissolved the contract and decided not to release the album because we weren’t fully satisfied with the production and material. And after we got signed on Napalm we re-recorded some of the songs on that recording and added some fresh stuff to it. And now when looking back we’re very satisfied that things went how they went.

The second label you had never released your full length album. Was that basically "A New Day" before signing to Napalm and re-recording the whole thing?

No…it was “AN OLD DAY!!!"

The first track on here "Follow Into The Cry" contains everything needed in a goth/pop/rock/metal release. The riffs are sinfully catchy and melodic while Mikko croons his way through this song of sadness, but sings passionately. Is this mixture an end result of living up there where it's constantly cold and not enough sunlight? 

It’s quite hard to explain where the sad sound of Finnish bands comes from. Maybe it’s the poor state of Finnish artists’ mental health and the crazy doctors who produce this stuff…it’s in the genes man! It’s funny to see how for example the Finnish nature affects on people coming outside the country. Exchange students for example often are sick all the time and very depressed of the darkness that surrounds us.

One song that really grabbed my attention was "Drama For Two." Even though the melancholy sound is still in tact, there are even some seminal death metal growls and the music seems to have added an extra punch. Some of the guitar work is a bit more aggressive while the bass is down tuned even lower because you can hear just how deep it is here. 

Yeah…”Drama for Two” was meant to add some extra balls to the end of the record. Instead of this trend in our genre of using female vocals to colour up the songs, we decided to make this “heavy metal duet”- idea and asked Tuomas Saukkonen from Before the Dawn to throw some growls in it. And it worked out better than well! This song is one of my favourites on this album…

The album was recorded by Teemu Aalto, mixed by Anssi Kippo and mastered by Mika Jussila who are all world renowned for their skills in the audio production scene. Were there any other folks considered before deciding or was this the only choice for the band?

We had been working with Teemu earlier and there the choice was quite easy to make. He’s in my opinion a great person and a very talented producer, even though he’s quite new in the scene. When it comes to Kippo and Jussila the selection was quite as easy. We had few different options but I’m glad we did it this way because the album ended up sounding really good compared to the budget and other resources we had in use.

"Darkness Of Day" has already been shot and it's the first video. How did everything go with that? Now in addition to that making the rounds on various DVD comps like Nuclear Blast's "Beauty In Darkness" or "Monsters Of Metal" do you know if this will be sent to stations like VIVA, Fuse, MTV? 

The video have been sent to various stations around the world and we’ll see if they will start to show it there. It would be really cool! I guess Napalm is releasing a DVD sometime this year and the video will be featured on it that’s for sure…I actually don’t know if the video have ended up on some compilations or anything?!! I took care of the production and many other stuff (writing, directing etc.) in the video process and for me it was a bit stressful, but very rewarding. The other guys seemed to enjoy themselves in the shootings. This was my first video production and I’m quite excited about the results. And there’s another video coming up for one of the albums songs!

Your first video/single has radio potential. Will this be sent to any of the stations in Europe because I know this brand of music is eaten up by all of the kids? 

Yeah, it will be, and it have been sent out to stations in Europe…Are they eating the stuff? Show some manners! Wait for the dinner! 

I know that all the Finnish bands know each other and help one another out whenever asked, but this genre has to be competitive. There are a lot of artists over there all vying for the kids attention. Do you feel like this? 

I don’t like to compete with anyone. We’re just doing our own thing and hoping that someone would like it. I think that our stuff is a bit rougher and more metal than the majority in our genre, so maybe we’ll manage to grab a bit wider audience or something.

Now that the album is completed and ready to be distributed on store shelves everywhere, are there big touring plans for the motherland as well as the rest of Europe? 

There have been lots of talking about touring all over, but it’s still all wide open. We’ll see, though it would be great to get a chance to play gigs outside Finland. And more in Finland as well…

I reserved this space for you. Is there anything that you would like to say to your new fans out there? 

Check out our website for some audio/visual pleasure, buy the new album and hope to see you at our gigs! All the Best for the New Year 2006!