Interviews

Let’s walk beside Maria on Middle Earth's sacred soil, chatting about Akallabeth – the fall of Numenor, the long cold winters of Finland and Battlelore’s latest album: Evernight.

Metalfan: Hi there and welcome to Metalfan webpages!
Maria: Hey, and thanks for the interview!

Metalfan: Although Battlelore is active for many years, your popularity isn’t very high in Romania; therefore, please be so kind and point out the most important aspects of your biography.
Maria: Jyri Vahvanen and Miika Kokkola founded Battlelore in 1999. The first promo CD “Warrior’s Tale” with T.Havo (growls, guitars), Gorthaur (drums) and P. Mennander (clean male vocals) was released that same year. “Warrior’s Tale” was liked everywhere, but we caught the attention of Napalm Records only after the release of the second demo “Dark Fantasy” in 2000. “Dark Fantasy” also introduced the at the time new Battlelore members; Kaisa Jouhki as the new female vocalist, Henri Vahvanen as the drummer and Maria (me) as the keyboard player. At the request of the label, we recorded an untitled three-track promo CD and soon thereafter the deal was finalized.
In autumn 2001 Battlelore recorded the debut “…Where the Shadows Lie” at Music-Bros Studios with producer Miitri Aaltonen. Shortly thereafter due to personal reasons, T. Havo left Battlelore. He was replaced by Jussi Rautio on lead guitar. The second album “Sword’s Song” was released in spring 2003. “Sword’s Song” was also recorded at Music-Bros Studios under the guidance of Miitri Aaltonen. Our first DVD “The Journey” saw the light of day in early 2004.
In August 2004 Battlelore endured another line-up change as Patrik Mennander left the band to follow another career path. After the successful European tour with two session musicians (vocalist Tomi Mykkänen and bass player Timo Honkanen, who filled in for a temporarily absent Miika Kokkola), we began searching for Patrik’s replacement. Later, Miika Kokkola announced that he too would be leaving Battlelore. Luckily, Timo and Tomi’s showing on tour convinced us that we could not find better men for the job.
Our third album “Third Age of the Sun” was recorded at Sound Suite Studios in spring 2005 resulting in an innovative and fresh finished product. With producer Terje Refsnes we found a new sound. We decided to leave out all the overdone computer programming that would result in an inorganic sound. The fourth Battlelore album, “Evernight”, was recorded in the autumn of 2006 and it was published in February 2007. Those are the most important parts of the Battlelore biography.

Metalfan: Your name suggests a warlike attitude even if your music isn’t very aggressive. Why did you choose it to name your band?
Maria: Well, as Battlelore’s music and lyrics are based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s tales of Middle-earth, and the tales themselves include loads of battles, tales and lores; it’s a fantasy world with a whole history, languages and races, adventures, loss, happiness and all there is in life, and thus the name is actually very descriptive. We have our aggressive and furious songs and the slow, acoustic ones, so it is a good name in my opinion. Jyri is the one who came up with the name, and the basic idea was to combine the words “battle” and “folklore”.

Metalfan: You have released in February a new album, called Evernight. Compared to your previous albums I found it more epic and bombastic, but with a cutting metal edge in some of the songs. Can Evernight be considered your most complex and diverse album?
Maria: The new album is called “Evernight” and that title gives a nice impression of the way the new album sounds. Compared to the previous album this one is darker and musically more developed. The atmosphere is kind of melancholic and dark. I think it’s because of many reasons; for example the lyrics of most songs on this album are based on Akallabeth – the fall of Numenor, which is a sad and furious tale. Other songs are also based on the darker tales, so that has influenced the sound. All that same sadness and anger can be heard on the whole album, with a hint of hope and beauty as well. We see “Evernight” as the strongest and darkest of the Battlelore albums. Compared to the earlier works it shows a more courageous and mature Battlelore. One might say that it’s more progressive in song writing than the previous albums, and yes, it can be considered our most complex and diverse album.

Metalfan: Which is the story behind Evernight? Is there a concept that links all the songs?
Maria: Actually the initial idea was to make the whole album about Akallabeth, the Fall of Numenor that is, but we didn’t extent the theme on the whole album. It’s still the most influential story for Evernight though. It’s a story where an island of men turns into madness as people start to envy gods for their eternal life. They start to worship darkness and their hearts become black, and later they declare a war against gods. Gods are furious about the turn of events and a storm rises destroying the island and all men with it. The main themes in Akallabeth as well as on other songs on Evernight are greed, deception, longing, destruction and oblivion. Death is also always present. That’s probably why the album turned out as dark and aggressive... Hehe. On the normal jewel case version there are 3 songs connected to the story, on the limited digipack there are 5 songs connected.

Metalfan: Let’s assume you have to describe in only three words your new album. Which would be these three words?Maria: Melancholy, fury and hope. Not connected directly to the musical aspects, but those words just describe Evernight too well, hehe.

Metalfan: How were the reactions concerning Evernight so far?
Maria: The feedback has been amazing – we’ve got really good reviews and people have liked this album a lot. Also the media especially in North-America and Europe has been very kind in their reviews and interviews. So far so good, I’d say. We’ll see how people really like the album as we hit the tour next week, hehe.

Metalfan: I know that JRR Tolkien had a major influence on your music and lyrics. Is his work still the major source of inspiration for Battlelore?
Maria: When Jyri created Battlelore, his main goal was to make music based on and inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien’s work. All of us have read the books of Mr. Tolkien and are truly inspired by the way he combines real folklore, legends and fiction in a whole fantasy world with its history, languages etc. There’s an endless amount of themes around which the songs can be made and unlike most think, our songs are more inspired by e.g. Silmarillion and other not so known books and tales than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. So our whole existence is based on Tolkien – I guess that’ll give you a hint on how important it all is, hehe.
Apart from Tolkien’s books and fantasy, we are definitely inspired by the Finnish nature. Our cold and dark winters as well as the light-filled, green summers bring us the kind of inspiration that can’t be reached otherwise. Our landscapes with lakes and wild nature are so beautiful and different from others that it’s hard to imagine getting this kind of inspirations elsewhere. Also the Finnish folklore “Kalevala” has inspired us – which is not a strange thing considering that Mr. Tolkien also took some inspiration from this exact folklore as well. He also based some of the Middle-earth languages on the Finnish language.
I think that we also get inspired by all kinds of things happening around us, the books we read, movies we see and the people we meet, so everything that happens can have some meaning in our lives. All seven of us listen to very different kind of music, so Battlelore doesn’t really show any specific influences or use certain musicians as role models or anything – we all bring our things and ideas and put those together, so it’s like a soup filled with seven different kind of spices and ingredients. Luckily they’ve all fit together so far, hehehe.

Metalfan: Don’t you think that the musical market is oversaturated by Tolkien, especially after the overwhelming success of Lord of the rings movie trilogy? Maybe this fact influenced your decision not to use for Evernight names or places from Tolkien novels?
Maria: I don’t think there’ve been that many people making music about Tolkien, or at least not so many well-known artists, so it hasn’t been THAT bad in the music industry. However, I do think that it all went a bit too far with all the merchandise for the films etc., and people got a bit tired of the whole Lord of the Rings -stuff. Battlelore was created in 1999 and the first record came out in 2002, so the films sort of surprised us – and many fans don’t know that. I think that in some ways it might be easier for us if we could have done our music without the films. It is however fascinating how many people have embraced the tales of Tolkien now that due to the films he’s more known around the world. I think most of our fans are delighted that someone actually puts his mind to creating a fantasy world through music and they usually are Tolkien fans at the same time as they are our fans. Of course some people just enjoy the music. The problem is of course, that our own images of Tolkien’s world aren’t the same as in the films, and we don’t sing about Orlando Bloom’s adventures but the adventures of elves from the books. Some fans don’t understand that.
And about the lyrics for Evernight; The lyrics have been our individual interpretations of Tolkien’s Middle-earth themes and tales. On previous albums we’ve had detailed lyrics and thus, made the basis known to our fans. Now that people know what Battlelore is, we had a chance to change the lyrics a bit. So, this time around we decided to leave out all the specific names, details and places from Middle-earth. That leads to the fact that the album is more universal and everyone can ponder, which tales the songs are based on and whether they want to give them some other meanings as well. This makes the album more interesting for the Tolkien fans as they need to really find out which tales the songs tell about, and also makes it easier for not Tolkien fans to relate to the songs.