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.